Judge Robert G. Doumar of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Norfolk, rules in favor of “enemy combatant” Yaser Esam Hamdi’s Federal Public Defender (FPD) and orders the government to grant the FPD access to Hamdi “because of fundamental justice provided under the Constitution.” Doumar orders that the meeting take place, unmonitored, on June 1, 2002. The government files a motion for stay pending appeal two days later, which is granted on June 4 by the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. [Yaser Esam Hamdi, et al. v. Donald Rumsfeld, et al., 6/24/2002; Washington Post, 1/9/2003]

US troops raid two houses near Gardez in the village of Kirmati. Five Afghan men are arrested: Mohammad Naim and his brother Sherbat; Ahmadullah and his brother Amanullah; and Khoja Mohammad. They are tied up, blindfolded, and taken to Bagram. “They threw us in a room, face down,” Naim later recalls. After a while, they are separated and he is taken to another room and ordered to strip. “They made me take off my clothes, so that I was naked.… A man came, and he had some plastic bag, and he ran his hands through my hair, shaking my hair. And then he pulled out some of my hair, some hair from my beard, and he put it in a bag.” Human Rights Watch later says it believes this was done to build a DNA database. Mohammad Naim recalls his treatment as humiliating, especially being photographed naked. “The most awful thing about the whole experience was how they were taking our pictures, and we were completely naked. Completely naked. It was completely humiliating.” Sixteen days later, the five men are released. According to Sherbat, an American apologizes to them and promises they will be receive compensation. “But we never did,” he says a year later. An interpreter gives them the equivalent of 70 US cents to buy tea. When they return, they find their homes looted and most of their valuable possessions gone. On March 10, 2003, almost a year after his release, Ahmadullah says he suffers from continuing anxiety as a result of his experience. “When we were there [at Bagram], I was so afraid they were going to kill me. Even now, having come back, I worry they will come and kill me.… I have to take medication now just to sleep.” [Human Rights Watch, 2004]

Bisher al-Rawi, an informant for the British intelligence agency MI5, begins to have doubts about his informant work. He is mostly helping MI5 communicate with imam Abu Qatada, another MI5 informant who is pretending to be hiding from the authorities (see Late September 2001-Summer 2002). Al-Rawi is concerned that he might incriminate himself by talking to people who have links to terrorism, and is also concerned that his role as an informant could be publicly exposed. He suggests holding a meeting between his MI5 handlers and a private attorney, and specifically suggests using human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce. However, his MI5 handlers refuse and instead have him meet with an MI5 lawyer known only by the alias “Simon.” Simon assures him that MI5 would come to his aid if he is compromised or has other problems. Al-Rawi will later recall: “[Simon] gave me very solid assurances about confidentiality. He promised they would even protect me and my family if they had to. He said that, if I was ever arrested, I should cooperate with the police. If a matter got to court, he would come as a witness and tell the truth.” Some agents are beginning to have doubts that he is carrying out all their orders, and he brings up the idea of ending the relationship. Then one day one of his MI5 handlers calls him and terminates his MI5 work. [Independent, 3/16/2006; Observer, 7/29/2007] Several months later, MI5 will betray him and turn him over to the CIA to be interrogated in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo (see December 8, 2002-March 2003 and March 2003-November 18, 2007).

Jamil al-Banna. [Source: Public domain]Jamil al-Banna is friends with Bisher al-Rawi, who is working as an informant for the British intelligence agency MI5. Al-Rawi is mostly helping MI5 communicate with imam Abu Qatada, who also is an MI5 informant but is pretending to be in hiding (see Late September 2001-Summer 2002 and Early December 2001). Al-Banna is aware of al-Rawi’s work and begins to help him. Sometimes al-Banna also serves as a go-between for MI5 and Abu Qatada. Al-Rawi stops working for MI5 in the summer of 2002 (see Summer 2002), but al-Banna does not. For instance, when Abu Qatada is arrested in late October 2002 (see October 23, 2002), al-Banna takes his wife and child home at the request of the British officials on the scene. [Independent, 3/16/2006] But in early November 2002, al-Banna will go to Gambia with al-Rawi on business, and MI5 will turn the two of them over to the CIA to be interrogated (see November 8, 2002-December 7, 2002).

Shah Mohammed. [Source: Cageprisoners]One day during the summer of 2002, Guantanamo detainee Abdul Razaq from Pakistan sees a fellow Pakistani prisoner, Shah Mohammed, preparing to hang himself from a sheet in a nearby cell. “First we shouted at Shah Mohammed to stop, but when he didn’t, we called the guards,” Razaq later says, describing the incident. “The guards came in and saved him. It was the first time he attempted this in my block, then he was taken to another place. He appeared to be unconscious.” [Guardian, 12/3/2003] Mohammed’s action is one of the first in a series of suicide attempts. A former detainee, Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed from Spain, sees several prisoners try to hang themselves with their clothes. [Guardian, 8/4/2004] Muhammad Naim Farooq personally witnesses two attempts, one involving an Afghan and the other an Iranian. “They tried to hang themselves with clothes. Both survived and were punished with solitary confinement, without any clothes. I could not see for how long.” [Amnesty International, 8/19/2003] One former detainee, interviewed by Human Rights Watch in Pakistan, will say he tried to kill himself at Guantanamo Bay three times. [Human Rights Watch, 1/9/2004]

Detainee Sayed Abassin arrives at Guantanamo “tied and gagged.” He later says, “It was the act of an animal to treat a human being like that,” adding, “It was the worst day of my life.” During the first weeks he is again interrogated at least ten times. Ten months later, in April 2003, without having seen a lawyer or court room, Abassin is released and returned to Afghanistan after signing an agreement that he will not have any involvement with the Taliban or al-Qaeda, and will do nothing to harm the US. [Amnesty International, 8/19/2003]

In May 2002, the CIA began using new torture techniques on captured al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida (see Mid-May 2002 and After), and by June senior CIA officials prepare a preliminary report to determine whether Zubaida’s confessions are accurate or not. According to author Gerald Posner, they “found nothing that could definitively prove Zubaida a liar. And they had uncovered some minor corroborating evidence about the times and places of the meetings he had mentioned, which meant he could be telling the truth.” [Posner, 2003, pp. 192] Vanity Fair will later comment that the “CIA would go on to claim credit for breaking Zubaida, and celebrate [James] Mitchell”—the psychologist who devised the torture techniques used on Zubaida by the CIA (see Late 2001-Mid-March 2002, January 2002 and After, and Mid-April 2002)—“as a psychological wizard who held the key to getting hardened terrorists to talk. Word soon spread that Mitchell and [his business partner Bruce] Jessen had been awarded a medal by the CIA for their advanced interrogation techniques. While the claim is impossible to confirm, what matters is that others believed it. The reputed success of the tactics was ‘absolutely in the ether,’ says one Pentagon civilian who worked on detainee policy.” [Vanity Fair, 7/17/2007]Much Intelligence Comes from His Possessions and FBI Interrogations - However, the reliability of Zubaida’s confessions remains controversial years later, and several factors complicate accessing their impact. For one, it appears that some of his most important confessions took place a month earlier when the FBI was interrogating him using rapport building instead of torture (see Late March through Early June, 2002). What the New York Times calls his two most notable confessions—that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the 9/11 mastermind and giving up the name of Jose Padilla, a militant living in the US—appear to come from this earlier period, although some accounts conflict. [New York Times, 6/27/2004; Suskind, 2006, pp. 116-117; New York Times, 9/10/2006; Vanity Fair, 7/17/2007] Furthermore, it is often not clear what was obtained from Zubaida’s confessions and what was obtained from his possessions. Journalist Ron Suskind will later write: “The phone numbers, computers, CDs, and e-mail address seized at Zubaida’s apartment now—a month after his capture—began to show a yield.… These higher-quality inputs were entered into big Cray supercomputers at NSA; many then formed the roots of a surveillance tree—truck to branches to limbs and buds.” [Suskind, 2006, pp. 116-117] So while it is said that information from Zubaida helped lead to the capture of al-Qaeda figures such as Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Omar al-Faruq, and Ahmed Muhammad al-Darbi, it is unclear where this information came from exactly. [Washington Post, 6/27/2004] Additionally, it is not even clear if he provided such leads. For instance, it has been reported that the main break that led to bin al-Shibh’s capture had nothing to do with Zubaida (see June 14, 2002 and Shortly After). [Salon, 9/7/2006]Zubaida Describes Vague and Unverifiable Plots - By most accounts, Zubaida’s confessions under torture around this time are frustratingly vague. He describes many planned attacks, such as al-Qaeda attacks on US shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, and more. Red alerts are sounded and thousands of law enforcement personnel are activated each time, but the warnings are too vague to lead to any arrests. Suskind will later comment that Zubaida’s information was “maybe nonsense, maybe not. There was almost no way to tell.” [Suskind, 2006, pp. 115-116, 121] But Suskind will later say more definitively: “[Zubaida] said, as people will, anything to make the pain stop. And we essentially followed every word and various uniformed public servants of the United States went running all over the country to various places that Zubaydah said were targets, and were not. Ultimately, we tortured an insane man and ran screaming at every word he uttered.” [Salon, 9/7/2006] Posner claims that Zubaida provided “false information intended to misdirect his captors.” For instance, “He caused the New York police to deploy massive manpower to guard the Brooklyn Bridge at the end of May [2002], after he told his interrogators that al-Qaeda had a plan to destroy ‘the bridge in the Godzilla movie.’” [Posner, 2003, pp. 191]Link between Iraq, al-Qaeda - Perhaps the most important claims Zubaida makes, at least from the viewpoint of Bush administration officials, are his allegations of an operational relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Some of Zubaida’s claims will later be leaked by administration officials, particularly his assertion that Osama bin Laden’s ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was working directly with Saddam Hussein to destabilize the autonomous Kurdish regime in northern Iraq (see December 2001-Mid-2002, October 2, 2002, and January 28, 2003). A former Pentagon analyst will later say: “I first saw the reports soon after Abu Zubaida’s capture. There was a lot of stuff about the nuts and bolts of al-Qaeda’s supposed relationship with the Iraqi Intelligence Service. The intelligence community was lapping this up, and so was the administration, obviously. Abu Zubaida was saying Iraq and al-Qaeda had an operational relationship. It was everything the administration hoped it would be.” Another Pentagon analyst will recall: “As soon as I learned that the reports had come from torture, once my anger had subsided I understood the damage it had done. I was so angry, knowing that the higher-ups in the administration knew he was tortured, and that the information he was giving up was tainted by the torture, and that it became one reason to attack Iraq.” [Vanity Fair, 12/16/2008]Zubaida Appears to Be Feeding Interrogators' Expectations - Dan Coleman, the FBI’s top al-Qaeda expert at the time who was able to analyze all the evidence from Zubaida, will later claim that the CIA “got nothing useful from the guy.” [Congressional Quarterly, 12/14/2007] Coleman will say: “The CIA wants everything in five minutes. It’s not possible, and it’s not productive. What you get in that circumstance are captives and captors playing to each other’s expectations, playing roles, essentially, that gives you a lot of garbage information and nothing you can use.” [Suskind, 2006, pp. 114] Given his low position in the jihadist hierachy, Coleman will add, Zubaida “would not have known that if it was true. But you can lead people down a course and make them say anything.” [Vanity Fair, 12/16/2008] Counterterrorism “tsar” General Wayne Downing is apparently intimately involved in Zubaida’s interrogation and will later recall: “[Zubaida] and some of the others are very clever guys. At times I felt we were in a classic counter-interrogation class: They were telling us what they think we already knew. Then, what they thought we wanted to know. As they did that, they fabricated and weaved in threads that went nowhere. But, even with these ploys, we still get valuable information and they are off the street, unable to plot and coordinate future attacks.” [Washington Post, 12/26/2002] In legal papers to prepare for a military tribunal hearing in 2007, Zubaida himself will assert that he told his interrogators whatever they wanted to hear to make the torture stop. [Washington Post, 12/18/2007]

Accused al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaida, having been tortured for months in a secret CIA prison in Thailand (see April - June 2002), has had a respite from the intensive interrogations he was initially subjected to. Now, though, the interrogations begin again, being what Zubaida will later recall as “more intens[e] than before.” Intensified Interrogations - Zubaida will later tell officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC): “Two black wooden boxes were brought into the room outside my cell. One was tall, slightly higher than me and narrow. Measuring perhaps in area [3 1/2 by 2 1/2 feet by 6 1/2 feet high]. The other was shorter, perhaps only [3 1/2 feet] in height. I was taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck, they then used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room. I was also repeatedly slapped in the face.… I was then put into the tall black box for what I think was about one and a half to two hours. The box was totally black on the inside as well as the outside.… They put a cloth or cover over the outside of the box to cut out the light and restrict my air supply. It was difficult to breathe. When I was let out of the box I saw that one of the walls of the room had been covered with plywood sheeting. From now on it was against this wall that I was then smashed with the towel around my neck. I think that the plywood was put there to provide some absorption of the impact of my body. The interrogators realized that smashing me against the hard wall would probably quickly result in physical injury.” In the Box - Zubaida will give detailed recollections of his time in the box: “After the beating I was then placed in the small box. They placed a cloth or cover over the box to cut out all light and restrict my air supply. As it was not high enough even to sit upright, I had to crouch down. It was very difficult because of my wounds. The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in the leg and stomach became very painful. I think this occurred about three months after my last operation. It was always cold in the room, but when the cover was placed over the box it made it hot and sweaty inside. The wound on my leg began to open and started to bleed. I don’t know how long I remained in the small box, I think I may have slept or maybe fainted. I was then dragged from the small box, unable to walk properly and put on what looked like a hospital bed, and strapped down very tightly with belts. A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was removed and the bed was rotated into an upright position. The pressure of the straps on my wounds was very painful. I vomited. The bed was then again lowered to horizontal position and the same torture carried out again with the black cloth over my face and water poured on from a bottle. On this occasion my head was in a more backward, downwards position and the water was poured on for a longer time. I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless. I thought I was going to die. I lost control of my urine. Since then I still lose control of my urine when under stress. I was then placed again in the tall box. While I was inside the box loud music was played again and somebody kept banging repeatedly on the box from the outside. I tried to sit down on the floor, but because of the small space the bucket with urine tipped over and spilt over me.… I was then taken out and again a towel was wrapped around my neck and I was smashed into the wall with the plywood covering and repeatedly slapped in the face by the same two interrogators as before. I was then made to sit on the floor with a black hood over my head until the next session of torture began. The room was always kept very cold. This went on for approximately one week. During this time the whole procedure was repeated five times. On each occasion, apart from one, I was suffocated once or twice and was put in the vertical position on the bed in between. On one occasion the suffocation was repeated three times. I vomited each time I was put in the vertical position between the suffocation. During that week I was not given any solid food. I was only given Ensure to drink. My head and beard were shaved everyday. I collapsed and lost consciousness on several occasions. Eventually the torture was stopped by the intervention of the doctor. I was told during this period that I was one of the first to receive these interrogation techniques, so no rules applied. It felt like they were experimenting and trying out techniques to be used later on other people.” Author Mark Danner will note that, according to the ICRC report, Zubaida’s impression of being a “guinea pig” is accurate. Some of the techniques used on him will not be reported again—the weeks of sitting in shackles, the coffin-sized boxes. Other techniques, such as the waterboarding, the permanent shackling, the “cold cell,” the incessant loud music and noise, will be used frequently on later captives, as will the constant light and the repeated beatings and physical abuse. Everything Authorized by Senior CIA, White House Officials - Danner will remind readers that the CIA interrogators never acted alone or with any degree of independence. Everything that is done and said to Zubaida is monitored by other officials on-site—guards, interrogators, doctors—and by senior CIA officials in Washington. CIA interrogator John Kiriakou will later tell a reporter: “It wasn’t up to individual interrogators to decide, ‘Well, I’m gonna slap him. Or I’m going to shake him. Or I’m gonna make him stay up for 48 hours.’ Each one of these steps… had to have the approval of the deputy director for operations. So before you laid a hand on him, you had to send in the cable saying, ‘He’s uncooperative. Request permission to do X.’ And that permission would come.… The cable traffic back and forth was extremely specific. And the bottom line was these were very unusual authorities that the agency got after 9/11. No one wanted to mess them up. No one wanted to get in trouble by going overboard.… No one wanted to be the guy who accidentally did lasting damage to a prisoner.” Danner also notes that shortly after Zubaida’s capture, the CIA briefed top White House officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Attorney General John Ashcroft, who, ABC News will later report, “then signed off on the [interrogation] plan” (see April 2002 and After and July 2002). During this time the White House is working with Justice Department officials to produce the so-called “golden shield” memo (see August 1, 2002) that will, supposedly, protect the White House and CIA from criminal charges. Even after the memo’s adoption, CIA Director George Tenet continues to tell top White House officials about the specific procedures being used on Zubaida and other prisoners, including techniques such as waterboarding, to ensure that the White House considered them legal. As ABC will later report, the briefings of principals were so detailed and frequent that “some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed.” [New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009]

Italian authorities monitoring a cell of Islamist extremists based in Milan, Italy, overhear one of the radicals plotting to create a new trans-European network. The surveillance target, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, who previously informed for the CIA in Albania (see August 27, 1995 and Shortly After), tells an unidentified man that they will use the network to “eliminate the enemies of God.” News of the network, which is to be based in Britain, causes the Italians to place Nasr under round the clock surveillance. [Vidino, 2006, pp. 236-41] Nasr will subsequently be kidnapped by the CIA (see Noon February 17, 2003).

Saudi national Ahmed Muhammad al-Darbi flies from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to Baku, Azerbaijan. While he is at customs at Baku airport waiting to be processed for entry, he is taken into custody by the local authorities. He will later say that when he was apprehended he did not know why the Azerbaijani authorities had taken him into custody and that he did not think beforehand that they would do so. He is held in Azerbaijani custody for about two months, later being handed over to the US (see August 2002). [al-Darbi, 7/1/2009]

Muhammad Naim Farooq, held in Zurmat, Afghanistan, up until this point, is sent to the Guantanamo prison. In an interview with Amnesty International, he will recall that the handcuffs were so tight that he and his fellow prisoners were crying from pain and anger. He adds: “We didn’t know where we were going. We were without hope because we were innocent.” [Amnesty International, 8/19/2003; Observer, 5/16/2004]

On May 25, 2002, a Palestinian named Hussein Abdelkadr Youssouf Mustafa is arrested in Pakistan and spends ten days in the Khaibar prison. On June 4, he is flown to Bagram together with 34 other Arab prisoners. They are stripped naked and subjected to stress positions, sleep deprivation, beatings, and humiliation. “They made me stand on one leg in the sun,” he later recalls. “They wouldn’t let me sleep for more than two hours. We had only a barrel for a toilet and had to use it in front of everyone.” [Independent, 1/8/2005] He hears other detainees screaming, who he believes are being beaten. [Mother Jones, 3/2005] The same happens to him. “I was beaten severely,” he claims. He is also doused with cold water and subjected to cold air. “[W]ater was thrown on me before facing an air conditioner,” he will say. [Independent, 1/8/2005] On one occasion, he later recounts to British journalist Robert Fisk, “an American soldier took me blindfolded. My hands were tightly cuffed, with my ears plugged so I could not hear properly, and my mouth covered so I could only make a muffled scream. Two soldiers, one on each side, forced me to bend down, and a third pressed my face down over a table. A fourth soldier then pulled down my trousers. They rammed a stick up my rectum.” [Mother Jones, 3/2005] Nevertheless, he says, “My torture was even less than what they did to others.” [Independent, 1/8/2005]

Omar al-Faruq. [Source: Getty Images]On June 5, 2002, Omar al-Faruq, a top al-Qaeda senior operative in Southeast Asia, is captured in the town of Bogor, Indonesia, by Indonesian agents after receiving a tip from the CIA. Curiously, later in the year, A.C. Manulang, the recently retired head of the Indonesian intelligence agency, will suggest that al-Faruq was actually a CIA mole assigned to infiltrate Islamic radical groups. Manulang will claim that the bombings that took place in Indonesia were actually the work of anti-Islamic intelligence agencies. [Tempo, 9/19/2002] In any case, al-Faruq is flown to the CIA interrogation center at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan where is subjected to months of intense interrogations. “It is likely, experts say, that… al-Faruq [was] left naked most of the time, his hands and feet bound. [He] may also have been hooked up to sensors, then asked questions to which interrogators knew the answers, so they could gauge his truthfulness,” the New York Times will later report. One Western intelligence official will tell the newspaper that al-Faruq’s interrogation was “not quite torture, but about as close as you can get.” For three months he is provided with very little food, subjected to sleep and light deprivation, prolonged isolation and temperatures ranging from 100 degrees to 10 degrees. On September 9, 2002, he reportedly breaks down and begins freely confessing all he knows (see September-October 2002). He provides information about “plans to drive explosives-laden trucks into American diplomatic centers [and] detailed information about people involved in those operations and other plots, writing out lengthy descriptions.” [New York Times, 3/9/2003]

In an address to the nation, President Bush labels captured Islamist militant Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002) as “al-Qaeda’s chief of operations.” He says: “Among those we have captured is a man named Abu Zubaida, al-Qaeda’s chief of operations. From him, and from hundreds of others, we are learning more about how the terrorists plan and operate; information crucial in anticipating and preventing future attacks.” He warns, “[W]e now know that thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us, and this terrible knowledge requires us to act differently.” [White House, 6/6/2002] This is, presumably, an oblique reference to the torture being inflicted on Zubaida and other detainees by CIA personnel (see April - June 2002). And by this time, senior government officials are aware that many intelligence officials believe that Zubaida’s importance and links to al-Qaeda have been overstated (see Shortly After March 28, 2002 and April 9, 2002 and After).

President George Bush designates Padilla, who has been in custody since May 8 (see May 8, 2002), an “enemy combatant” on advice from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft (see June 8, 2002), and directs Rumsfeld to see that he his taken into military custody. Padilla is taken to the Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, South Carolina sometime during the middle of that night. At the time of the transfer, Padilla was awaiting a judgment on a request made by his counsel to have the material witness warrant (see May 8, 2002) vacated. [CNN, 6/11/2002]

Attorney General John Ashcroft announces Padilla’s arrest (see June 9, 2002), claiming that “in apprehending [Padilla] as he sought entry into the United States,” the US government has “disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive ‘dirty bomb.’” [CBS News, 6/10/2002] Similarly, President George Bush says: “This guy, Padilla, is a bad guy. And he is where he needs to be—detained,” along with many other “would-be killers” as part of the war on terrorism. And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld too, states that Padilla “was unquestionably involved in terrorist activities.” [CNN, 6/11/2002]

Donna R. Newman, attorney for “enemy combatant” Jose Padilla (see June 10, 2002), files a habeas corpus petition in the District Court for the Southern District of New York. Newman informs the court that she has been told by the government that she is not permitted to visit Padilla or to speak with him. She may write, but he might not receive the correspondence, she says. [Jose Padilla v. George W. Bush et al., 12/4/2002 ]

In Doha, Qatar, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the purpose of detaining “enemy combatant” Jose Padilla (see June 10, 2002) is to obtain information from him. “Our interest, really, in this case, is not law enforcement,” he says. “It is not punishment. Because he was a terrorist or working with the terrorists, our interest at the moment is to try to find out everything he knows so hopefully we can stop other terrorist acts.” To illustrate his argument, Rumsfeld describes a recent situation in which intelligence gained from a prisoner in Kandahar, Afghanistan, led to the prevention of three terrorist attacks in Singapore (this may be a garbled reference to the killing of Mohammed Atef, see November 15, 2001 and November 15-Late December 2001). “If someone had said when we found that information or that person, ‘Well, now, let’s arrest the person and let’s start the process of punishing that person for having done what he did,’ we never would have gotten that information, and people would have died.” [American Forces Press Service, 6/11/2002]

Since the start of June until now, Guantanamo has seen the arrival of roughly 180 new prisoners, increasing the total number to 564. With a maximum capacity of Camp Delta is 612, the facility will soon be full. [American Forces Press Service, 1/14/2003] The number will stay level at around 600 (see Mid-October 2002), meaning that the interrogators at the Bagram sifting-station will have to be more discerning about who to send over.

The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reverses a court ruling issued on May 29 (see May 29, 2002) by Judge Robert G. Doumar of the US District Court in Norfolk. The appeal court says that US Federal Public Defender Frank W. Dunham is not related to “enemy combatant” Yaser Esam Hamdi and has never met him, and thus cannot file a petition on his behalf. This does not affect the habeas case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, Hamdi’s father, or an order issued on June 11 (see June 11, 2002) by a district court judge to allow a Federal Public Defender access to the detainee. [Yaser Esam Hamdi, et al. v. Donald Rumsfeld, et al., 6/24/2002]

Jose Padilla (see June 10, 2002)‘s public prosecutors file a document with the District Court for the Southern District in Lower Manhattan, which says Padilla had been declared an “enemy combatant” on grounds that “Citizens who associate themselves with the enemy and with its aid, guidance, and direction, enter this country bent on hostile acts, are enemy belligerents.” [CNN, 6/27/2002]

Joint Personnel Recovery Agency logo. [Source: US Air Force]The Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), the Pentagon agency tasked with advising the Defense Department on the use of harsh interrogation techniques—torture—against suspected terrorists in US custody (see December 2001), sends an unsigned memo to the Pentagon’s chief counsel, William Haynes, advising him that the use of such methods would constitute “torture,” and would produce “unreliable information” from torture victims. Memo Warned of Torture Would Produce Bad Information - “The requirement to obtain information from an uncooperative source as quickly as possible—in time to prevent, for example, an impending terrorist attack that could result in loss of life—has been forwarded as a compelling argument for the use of torture,” the document reads. “In essence, physical and/or psychological duress are viewed as an alternative to the more time-consuming conventional interrogation process. The error inherent in this line of thinking is the assumption that, through torture, the interrogator can extract reliable and accurate information. History and a consideration of human behavior would appear to refute this assumption.” The key deficiency of physical or psychological duress is the reliability and accuracy of the information gained, the memo says. “A subject in pain may provide an answer, any answer, or many answers in order to get the pain to stop.” The memo also warns that the use of torture by the US could influence US enemies to torture American captives: “The unintended consequence of a US policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured US personnel.” It concludes that “the application of extreme physical and/or psychological duress (torture) has some serious operational deficits, most notably the potential to result in unreliable information.” The word “extreme” is underlined. Also Sent to CIA - Besides Haynes, the memo is forwarded to the Pentagon’s Office of the General Counsel, and apparently to CIA chief counsel John Rizzo and the Justice Department. It is unclear whether high-ranking White House officials will see the document. One of Many Warnings - JPRA chief of staff Daniel Baumgartner will later say that the agency “sent a lot of cautionary notes” regarding harsh techniques. “There is a difference between what we do in training and what the administration wanted the information for,” Baumgartner will tell a reporter in 2009. “What the administration decided to do or not to do was up to the guys dealing with offensive prisoner operations.… We train our own people for the worst possible outcome… and obviously the United States government does not torture its own people.”- Senator Says Memo Suppressed - After the memo becomes public knowledge as part of a Senate report on Bush administration torture decisions (see April 21, 2009), Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, will say that he believes the memo was deliberately ignored and perhaps suppressed. Levin will call the memo’s treatment “part of a pattern of squelching dissent.” A Bush administration official will later say of the memo: “That information was not brought to the attention of the principals. That would have been relevant. The CIA did not present with pros and cons, or points of concern. They said this was safe and effective, and there was no alternative.” The memo conflicts with proposals from two JPRA psychologists heavily involved in creating a program of harsh interrogation tactics (see January 2002 and After). [Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, 7/2002 ; Washington Post, 4/25/2009]

Instructors from the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), which oversees the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training program, conduct a training seminar for intelligence officials. JPRA officials, including senior psychologist Bruce Jessen, have proposed a set of interrogation procedures that amounts to torture (see January 2002 and After and April 16, 2002), and the JPRA instructors are now training CIA and other agency officials in those procedures. Two JPRA legal advisers tell the group that such harsh interrogation methodologies are already deemed acceptable, even though the Justice Department has not yet issued such approval (see August 1, 2002). The lawyers tell the seminar participants, “They [interrogators] could use all forms of psychological pressure discussed, and all the physiological pressures with the exception of the ‘water board.’” The lawyers say that waterboarding might also be permitted, but interrogators “would need prior approval.” [Washington Post, 4/22/2009] During the seminar, CIA agents are given two days of training in waterboarding (see July 1-2, 2002). In 2009, the media learns that Jessen and his partner, James Mitchell, are paid $1,000 a day for the training (see April 30, 2009).

The FBI takes over interrogations of Saudi Guantanamo detainee Mohamed al-Khatani. He had been captured and taken into US custody months before (see December 2001) but his real identity was only recently discovered. In the months before, military intelligence, using harsh tactics, was unsuccessful in gaining information from him, but the FBI allegedly uses subtle persuasion with an experienced interrogator and succeeds. Khatani discloses: He is an al-Qaeda member and received terrorist training at two al-Qaeda camps. He attended an al-Qaeda summit in Malaysia attended by two 9/11 hijackers (see January 5-8, 2000). He attempted unsuccessfully to be one of the hijackers himself, failing to enter the US in August 2001 (see August 4, 2001). He had been sent to the US by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. He had met bin Laden on several occasions and had been in contact with many other senior al-Qaeda leaders. He is related to Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, an apparent al-Qaeda sleeper agent already arrested in the US (see September 10, 2001). He informs on about thirty other prisoners being held at Guantanamo. But he is also believed to have little knowledge of other al-Qaeda plots. [New York Times, 6/21/2004; Time, 3/3/2006] He will later recant his confession (see October 26, 2006).

A CIA officer applies pressure to a detainee’s carotid artery during an interrogation, almost causing him to lose consciousness. The “pressure point” technique is applied a total of three times on the detainee. During the applications, a fellow officer sits opposite the detainee and indicates to the first officer to stop when the detainee starts to pass out. The first officer will later acknowledge to the CIA’s inspector general that “he laid hands on the detainee and may have made him think he was going to lose consciousness.” The use of such pressure points is not an authorized technique at the CIA. [Central Intelligence Agency, 5/7/2004, pp. 69-70 ] In 2004, an internal CIA report will document such “pressure point” techniques in its examination of torture allegations (see May 7, 2004).

US military instructor Joseph Witsch, who is helping craft “extreme” methods of interrogation—torture—for use against captured terror suspects, acknowledges that some of the techniques being developed come from torture inflicted on captured US servicemen in previous conflicts, including those used by Chinese interrogators against US soldiers captured during the Korean War (see December 2001). “We can provide the ability to exploit personnel based on how our enemies have done this type of thing over the last five decades,” Witsch writes in a classified memo. [Washington Post, 4/22/2009]

A new interrogation unit arrives at the Bagram Collection Point (BCP), the improvised interrogation and holding facility at Bagram Air Force Base (see October 2001). The unit is headed by Lieutenant Carolyn Wood (see January 22, 2003-May 8, 2003), who leads a 13-man unit from the 525th Military Intelligence Brigade at Fort Bragg, NC. Wood’s unit is augmented by six Arabic-speaking reservists from the Utah National Guard. Many in the group, consolidated under Company A of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, are counterintelligence specialists with no background in interrogation. Only two of the soldiers have ever questioned actual prisoners. The training they receive is ad hoc and minimal. The noncommissioned officer in charge of the interrogators, Staff Sergeant Steven Loring, will later tell investigators, “There was nothing that prepared us for running an interrogation operation” like the one at Bagram. Nor are the rules of engagement clear. The platoon uses the standard interrogations guide, Section 34-52 of the Army Fleld Manual, and an order from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to treat prisoners “humanely” and, when possible, within the strictures of the Geneva Conventions. But when President Bush determines in February 2002 that the Conventions do not apply to Taliban and al-Qaeda captives (see February 7, 2002), the interrogators decide they “could deviate slightly from the rules,” in the words of Utah reservist Sergeant James Leahy. “There was the Geneva Conventions for enemy prisoners of war, but nothing for terrorists,” Leahy will tell Army investigators. And the detainees, senior intelligence officers say, are to be considered terrorists until proved otherwise. One group of soldiers is later dubbed “the Testosterone Gang”; they decorate their tent with a Confederate flag, spend large amounts of time bodybuilding, and quickly earn a reputation as some of the most brutal of the soldiers at Bagram. [New York Times, 5/20/2005]

Mehdi Ghezali, a detainee at Guantanamo, decides to stop answering his interrogators’ questions. According to Ghezali, they had been asking the same questions over and over again. At some point during his detention, the guards bring Ghezali an American woman so he can have sex with her. “They tried to make me lose my faith,” he tells the Agence France-Presse in July 2004. “Maybe they wanted to use it against me so I would cooperate.”
[Reuters, 7/14/2004; Agence France-Presse, 7/14/2004]

Hamburg al-Qaeda cell member Mohammed Haydar Zammar is being held in a prison in Syria, Time magazine reports. According to an unnamed US intelligence source, Zammar is providing useful information about al-Qaeda while being tortured and interrogated by Syrian intelligence. “He’s like Abu Zubaida,” the source says. “He’s kind of cooperating. Or he’s cooperating without realizing that he’s doing it.” Time reports that US officials say “no Americans are in the room with the Syrians who interrogate Zammar. US officials in Damascus submit written questions to the Syrians, who relay Zammar’s answers back. State Department officials like the arrangement because it insulates the US government from any torture the Syrians may be applying to Zammar. And some State Department officials suspect that Zammar is being tortured.” German officials are angry at the arrangement, because they say they are not getting any of the new intelligence from Zammar. They also complain that they didn’t even know until recently that the US had arranged for Zammar to be renditioned from Morocco to Syria in late 2001 (see December 2001). [Time, 7/1/2002] German officials will make a secret agreement with the Syrian government that gives them access to Zammar in late 2002. But Germans will only be able to meet with him one time (see November 20-22, 2002). US cooperation with Syria on counterterrorism will collapse in early 2003, so presumably US intelligence loses access to reports on Zammar’s interrogations at that time (see Early 2002-January 2003).

Officials from the Pentagon’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) conduct a two-day seminar with select CIA interrogators and other agents on the methodologies of waterboarding. The JPRA officials are instructors in the SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Evasion) program, which teaches US soldiers how to resist torture. SERE instructors are not trained interrogators, and the SERE techniques, originally based on Chinese Communist methods used to force false confessions from American prisoners during the Korean War (see Mid-April 2002 and July 2002), have never been shown to produce reliable information from their victims. [Agence France-Presse, 4/22/2009]

Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan. [Source: FBI]Al-Qaeda leader Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan is allegedly arrested in Methadar, a slum region of Karachi, Pakistan. Swedan, a Kenyan, had been wanted for a key role in the 1998 US embassy bombings (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998). The slum area where he is arrested is said to have been used by al-Qaeda to ship gold and al-Qaeda operatives out of Pakistan after 9/11, and thousands of dollars, fake passports, and visa stamps are found in his house. Pakistani agents are said to have been led to Swedan by satellite telephone intercepts provided by the FBI. Neighbors will later claim to have seen Swedan taken away, but both the US and Pakistani governments deny that he has been arrested. [Daily Times (Lahore), 9/9/2002; Asia Times, 9/11/2002] His name is not taken off an FBI wanted list years after his alleged arrest. In 2007, Amnesty International and other human rights groups will claim that he has been secretly held by the US or renditioned to another country (see June 7, 2007). In 2008, counterterrorism expert Peter Bergen will conclude based on various reports that Swedan was renditioned by the US from Pakistan in 2002. [Mother Jones, 3/3/2008] However, reports of Swedan’s capture appear to be incorrect, because later reports will say that he is killed in a CIA drone strike in Pakistan in 2009 (see January 1, 2009). If so, it is unknown who neighbors say they saw captured on this date.

The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit decides in favor of the government, refusing to uphold a district court’s order (see May 29, 2002) that “enemy combatant” Yaser Esam Hamdi be allowed access to his lawyer. The appeals court argues that the district court ordered access “without adequately considering [its] implications.” It states that it “has long been established that if Hamdi is indeed an ‘enemy combatant’ who was captured during hostilities in Afghanistan, the government’s present detention of him is a lawful one.” In deference to the government, the court states that the “executive is best prepared to exercise the military judgment attending the capture of alleged combatants,” adding that the “political branches are best positioned to comprehend this global war in its full context and it is the president who has been charged to use force against those ‘nations, organizations, or persons he determines’ were responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks.” The court asserts that the “Constitution’s commitment of the conduct of war to the political branches of American government requires the court’s respect at every step.” [Yaser Esam Hamdi, et al. v. Donald Rumsfeld, et al., 6/24/2002] The unanimous three-judge ruling is written by Judge Harvey Wilkinson IV, appointed to the bench by President Reagan in 1984 and often touted as a potential Supreme Court nominee by Bush administration officials and supporters. [Savage, 2007, pp. 153]

John Walker Lindh’s trial comes to a sudden and unexpected end when prosecutors and defense attorneys strike a plea agreement. Lindh agrees to plead guilty to serving the Taliban. He also admits that while serving under the Taliban he carried a gun and grenades. This adds ten years imprisonment for the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. [CBS News, 7/15/2002; Guardian, 7/15/2002; Associated Press, 7/15/2002; Plea Agreement. United States of America v. John Walker Lindh, 7/15/2002] The nine other counts, including the charges of conspiracy to murder Americans and providing material support to terrorists, are dismissed. In return, his defense withdraws the claim that Lindh has been abused or tortured at American hands. According to the agreement, Lindh “puts to rest his claims of mistreatment by the United States military, and all claims of mistreatment are withdrawn.” [Amnesty International, 10/20/2003] Defense attorney Jim Brosnahan tells journalist Seymour Hersh that “the Department of Defense insists that we state that there was ‘no deliberate’ mistreatment of John.” [New Yorker, 5/17/2004] And thus, in a formal statement, Lindh says, “that he was not intentionally mistreated by the US military.” [Mercury News (San Jose), 5/20/2004] Lindh’s other attorney, George Harris, tells the World Socialist Web Site, “I think that one thing that motivated the government to resolve the case was certainly their reluctance to have the evidence presented about how John Lindh was treated while he was in US military custody.” Another motive for the prosecutors to agree to a plea bargain, Harris suggests, is the expected disclosure during a public trial of the government’s own ties to the Taliban. [World Socialist Web Site, 10/7/2002] Harris explains that there was good reason to assume that if the trial would go in favor of Lindh, the government would declare him an “enemy combatant” and detain him indefinitely, perhaps in solitary incommunicado confinement, without charges, access to lawyers or relatives, like it had done only recently, on June 9 (see June 9, 2002), to another US citizen Jose Padilla. “It was the government’s position,” Harris says, “that even if John Lindh had been acquitted, or had been convicted and served his time, that it still would have been within the government’s power to declare him an enemy combatant and continue to detain him.” [World Socialist Web Site, 10/7/2002] Lindh was therefore in a no-win-situation. Even after release following his twenty-year sentence, he will not be certain of his freedom. The plea agreement says that “for the rest of the defendant’s natural life, should the Government determine that the defendant has engaged in [proscribed] conduct […] the United States may immediately invoke any right it has at that time to capture and detain the defendant as an unlawful enemy combatant.” [Plea Agreement. United States of America v. John Walker Lindh, 7/15/2002]

The district court for the Eastern District of Virginia holds a hearing in the case of “enemy combatant” Yaser Hamdi and questions the government’s arguments for keeping Hamdi detained. Questions raised by the district judge are: “With whom is the war I should suggest that we’re fighting?” and “Will the war never be over as long as there is any member [or] any person who might feel that they want to attack the United States of America or the citizens of the United States of America?” The court orders the government to include answers to these and other questions in a response to Hamdi’s habeas petition by July 25 (see July 25, 2002). [Yaser Esam Hamdi, et al. v. Donald Rumsfeld, et al., 1/8/2003 ]

Terror suspect Binyam Mohamed (see May-September, 2001) is flown from Pakistan to Morocco as part of a joint British-American attempt to force him to divulge information about possible nuclear devices owned by Islamist militants (see May 17 - July 21, 2002). He is flown—trussed, gagged, blindfolded, and diapered (see October 4, 2001)—to Rabat, Morocco, a flight later confirmed by the CIA’s own flight logs. He remains in Moroccan custody for 15 months. Beaten, Slashed with Scalpels - As he will later recall, he is introduced to Moroccan detention practices by an interrogator named Marwan, who gives him thorough and repeated beatings. When Mohamed has been softened up: “[T]hey cut off my clothes with some kind of doctor’s scalpel. I was totally naked.… They took the scalpel to my right chest. It was only a small cut. Maybe an inch. Then they cut my left chest. One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute, watching my reaction. I was in agony, crying, trying desperately to suppress myself, but I was screaming. I remember Marwan seemed to smoke half a cigarette, throw it down, and start another. They must have done this 20 to 30 times in maybe two hours. There was blood all over. They cut all over my private parts. One of them said it would be better just to cut it off, as I would only breed terrorists.” This happens time and again over the next 15 months. British Complicity in CIA, Moroccan Interrogations - Documents disclosed for Mohamed’s later lawsuit against the US (see February 4, 2009) show that British MI5 agents are aware of the entirety of Mohamed’s treatment, and are in collusion with the Moroccans and the US in Mohamed’s treatment; on September 30, MI5 and CIA officials hold a conference where Mohamed’s treatment and interrogation are discussed. During much of Mohamed’s detention in Morocco, MI5 passes questions and photographs to the CIA for use in Mohamed’s interrogations (see February 24, 2009). Mohamed will later recall: “They started bringing British files to the interrogations—thick binders, some of them containing sheaves of photos of people who lived in London and places there like mosques. It was obvious the British were feeding them questions about people in London. When I realized that the British were co-operating with the people torturing me, I felt completely naked. It was when they started asking the questions supplied by the British that my situation worsened. They sold me out.” Elaborate Confessions - By this time, as Mohamed will recall, he is willing to confess to anything to make the torture stop. “They had fed me enough through their questions for me to make up what they wanted to hear,” he will recall. “I confessed to it all. There was the plot to build a dirty nuclear bomb, and another to blow up apartments in New York with their gas pipes.” The “gas pipe” plot connects Mohamed to 9/11 plotter Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who supposedly conceived of the idea. “I said Khalid Shaikh Mohammed had given me a false passport after I was stopped the first time in Karachi and that I had met Osama bin Laden 30 times,” Mohamed will recall. “None of it was true. The British could have stopped the torture because they knew I had tried to use the same passport at Karachi both times (see September 2001 - April 9, 2002). That should have told them that what I was saying under torture wasn’t true. But so far as I know, they did nothing.” 'Rendered' to Afghanistan - Fifteen months after being “rendered” to Morocco, Mohamed is “rendered” to Afghanistan by the CIA (see January-September 2004). [Daily Mail, 3/8/2009]

Wreckage left behind where a missile struck Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi’s truck in Yemen. [Source: Associated Press]Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issue a secret directive ordering commander of Special Operations Air Force General Charles Holland “to develop a plan to find and deal with members of terrorist organizations” anywhere in the world (see July 22, 2002). The directive says, “The objective is to capture terrorists for interrogation or, if necessary, to kill them, not simply to arrest them in a law-enforcement exercise.” Holland is to cut through the Pentagon bureaucracy and process deployment orders “in minutes and hours, not days and weeks.” In internal Defense Department memos, Rumsfeld and the civilian officials close to him lay out the case for a new approach to the war on terrorism, one that would partly rely on the killing of individuals outside war zones. [New Yorker, 12/16/2002] The first public manifestation of this new policy will be the November 2002 assassination of al-Qaeda leader Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi in Yemen with a Predator missile strike (see November 3, 2002).

The government files a response in the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to the petition for a writ of habeas corpus for “enemy combatant” Yaser Hamdi (see July 18, 2002) and motions for the petition to be dismissed. The response, a two-page declaration of facts written by Special Adviser to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michael H. Mobbs and known as the “Mobbs Declaration,” asserts that because Hamdi was “affiliated” with the Taliban and was carrying a rifle at the time of his surrender, the US military has designated him as an “enemy combatant.” It does not say that Hamdi actually fought with the Taliban against US forces. [Yaser Esam Hamdi, et al. v. Donald Rumsfeld, et al., 1/8/2003 ; Washington Post, 1/9/2003]

The CIA’s Office of Technical Services gathers data about the use of potential “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which the CIA wishes to use on detainees in the war on terror, and their long-term psychological effects on detainees. According to the agency’s inspector general, the information is solicited from “a number of psychologists and knowledgeable academics in the area of psychopathology.” It also comes from the Defense Department’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), which provides information about Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training and its subsequent psychological effects on students. The JPRA says that no long-term psychological effects result from the use of the techniques, including waterboarding, on SERE students. The data is then provided to lawyers at the agency’s Office of General Counsel and the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, who use it to draft legal opinions. [Central Intelligence Agency, 5/7/2004, pp. 14 ]

Brig. Gen. Rick Baccus, the commander of Military Police at Guantanamo, tells journalists visiting Guantanamo that military officers have concerns that the inmates are still being considered “enemy combatants” rather than “prisoners of war.” [Guardian, 10/16/2002]

The Azerbaijani authorities turn Ahmed Muhammad al-Darbi, a Saudi they are holding (see June 2002), over to US agents. In 2009 Al-Darbi will issue a public statement alleging he is tortured by the US (see July 1, 2009), and a section of the statement concerning what these agents do to him in Azerbaijan will be redacted. However, an unredacted section says, “They then blindfolded me, wrapped their arms around my neck in a way that strangled me, and cursed at me.” Al-Darbi will later say he is frightened because he does not know who is holding him and where they are taking him. He will eventually be flown to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. [al-Darbi, 7/1/2009]

Attorney General John Ashcroft is informed that a detainee has been waterboarded 119 times. The source of the notification is unclear, although it presumably comes from the agency doing the waterboarding, the CIA. [Central Intelligence Agency, 5/7/2004, pp. 50 ] The detainee is presumably Abu Zubaida, who was waterboarded at least 83 times (see May 2003), although it could also be Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times (see April 18, 2009).

Military interrogators at Guantanamo begin inquiring about the lengths to which they can go to question suspected terrorists. They are particularly interested in Mohamed al-Khatani, a Saudi captured in the Afghan-Pakistan border region in December 2001 (see December 2001). When they learn that al-Khatani was denied entry to the US in 2001 (see August 4, 2001), they decide he may be the so-called “20th hijacker” for the 9/11 attacks, especially after the FBI cajoles him into confessing to being an al-Qaeda operative (see July 2002). But al-Khatani will not, or cannot, divulge information about upcoming terror attacks, and interrogators want to increase the pressure on him (see August 8, 2002-January 15, 2003). They also wonder if, since they have found one apparently high-level al-Qaeda operative among the crowd of low-level prisoners shipped from Afghanistan, there might be others lurking in the group and pretending to be ordinary peasants. [Savage, 2007, pp. 177-178]

Hussein Abdelkadr Youssouf Mustafa says he is administered pills before boarding a plane from Afghanistan to Guantanamo. “They pushed three or four pills into my mouth, drugs,” he says “I felt all the time I was between sleeping and waking.” [Independent, 1/8/2005] He was arrested on May 25, 2002 in Pakistan (see June 4, 2002-early August 2002).

Jay Bybee, the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), writes a secret memo to John Rizzo, the acting general counsel of the CIA. The memo is entitled: “Memorandum for John Rizzo, Acting General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency: Interrogation of al-Qaeda Operative.” It will be released seven years later, after prolonged litigation by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU—see April 16, 2009). It parallels another secret memo written by OLC lawyer John Yoo for White House counsel Alberto Gonzales (see August 1, 2002). The memo, written at the request of CIA officials, finds that the use of the interrogation techniques proposed for use on captured Islamist extremist Abu Zubaida are consistent with federal law (see Mid-May, 2002 and July 17, 2002). The OLC has determined that the only federal law governing the interrogation of a non-citizen detained outside the US is the federal anti-torture statute, Section 2340A of Title 18 of the US Code. Bybee’s memo goes into detail about 10 torture techniques, and explains why they are all legal to use on Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002), currently being held in a secret CIA “black site” in Thailand (see April - June 2002). Bybee writes that Zubaida will enter a new, “increased pressure phase” of interrogation, and will be dealt with by a “Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (‘SERE’) training psychologist, who has been involved with the interrogations since they began.” [Office of Legal Counsel, 8/1/2002 ; American Civil Liberties Union [PDF], 1/28/2009 ; Senate Intelligence Committee, 4/22/2009 ]Lack of Intent Equates Legality - As long as there is no intent to cause “severe pain or suffering,” Bybee writes, none of these techniques violate US law. “To violate the statute, an individual must have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering,” Bybee writes. “Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture.… We have further found that if a defendant acts with the good faith belief that his actions will not cause such suffering, he has not acted with specific intent.” [Office of Legal Counsel, 8/1/2002 ; CNN, 4/17/2009]Ten Techniques of Authorized Torture - Bybee explains the 10 techniques that can be used on Zubaida: Attention grasp: “The attention grasp consists of grasping the individual with both hands, one hand on each side of the collar opening, in a controlled and quick motion. In the same motion as the grasp, the individual is drawn toward the interrogator.” Walling: “For walling, a flexible false wall will be constructed. The individual is placed with his heels touching the wall. The interrogator pulls the individual forward and then quickly and firmly pushes the individual into the wall. It is the individual’s shoulder blades that hit the wall. During this motion, the head and neck are supported with a rolled hood or towel that provides a c-collar effect to help prevent whiplash. To further reduce the probability of injury, the individual is allowed to rebound from the flexible wall. You have orally informed us that the false wall is in part constructed to create a loud sound when the individual hits it, which will further shock or surprise in the individual. In part, the idea is to create a sound that will make the impact seem far worse than it is and that will be far worse than any injury that might result from the action.” Facial hold: “The facial hold is used to hold the head immobile. One open palm is placed on either side of the individual’s face. The fingertips are kept well away from the individual’s eyes.” Facial slap (insult slap): “With the facial slap or insult slap, the interrogator slaps the individual’s face with fingers slightly spread. The hand makes contact with the area directly between the tip of the individual’s chin and the bottom of the corresponding earlobe. The interrogator invades the individual’s personal space. The goal of the facial slap is not to inflict physical pain that is severe or lasting. Instead, the purpose of the facial slap is to induce shock, surprise, and/or humiliation.” Cramped confinement: “Cramped confmement involves the placement of the individual in a confined space, the dimensions of which restrict the individual’s movement. The confined space is usually dark. The duration of confinement varies based upon the size of the container. For the larger confined space, the individual can stand up or sit down; the smaller space is large enough for the subject to sit down. Confinement in the larger space can last up to 18 hours; for the smaller space, confinement lasts for no more than two hours.” Wall standing: “Wall standing is used to induce muscle fatigue. The individual stands about four to five feet from a wall with his feet spread approximately to shoulder width. His arms are stretched out in front of him, with his fingers resting on the wall. His fingers support all of his body weight. The individual is not permitted to move or reposition his hands or feet.” Stress positions: “A variety of stress positions may be used. You have informed us that these positions are not designed to produce the pain associated with contortions or twisting of the body. Rather, somewhat like walling, they are designed to produce the physical discomfort associated with muscle fatigue. Two particular stress positions are likely to be used on [Zubaida]: (1) sitting on the floor with legs extended straight out in front of him with his arms raised above his head; and (2) kneeling on the floor while leaning back at a 45 degree angle. You have also orally informed us that through observing Zubaydah in captivity, you have noted that he appears to be quite flexible despite his wound.” Sleep deprivation: “You have indicated that your purpose in using this technique is to reduce the individual’s ability to think on his feet and, through the discomfort associated with lack of sleep, to motivate him to cooperate. The effect of such sleep deprivation will generally remit after one or two nights of uninterrupted sleep. You have informed us that your research has revealed that, in rare instances, some individuals who are already predisposed to psychological problems may experience abnormal reactions to sleep deprivation. Even in those cases, however, reactions abate after the individual is permitted to sleep. Moreover, personnel with medical training are available to and will intervene in the unlikely event of an abnormal reaction. You have orally informed us that you would not deprive [Zubaida] of sleep for more than 11 days at a time and that you have previously kept him awake for 72 hours, from which no mental or physical harm resulted.” Insect confinement: “You would like to place [Zubaida] in a cramped confinement box with an insect. You have informed us he has a fear of insects. In particular, you would like to tell Zubaydah that you intend to place a stinging insect into the box with him. You would, however, place a harmless insect in the box. You have orally informed us that you would in fact place a caterpillar in the box. [REDACTED]” Waterboarding: “Finally, you would like to use a technique called the “water-board.” In this procedure, the individual is bound securely on an inclined bench, which is approximately four feet by seven feet. The individual’s feet are generally elevated. A cloth is placed over the forehead and eyes. Water is then applied to the cloth in a controlled manner. As this is done, the cloth is lowered until it covers both the nose and mouth. Once the cloth is saturated and completely covers the mouth and nose, air now is slightly restricted for 20 to 40 seconds due to the presence of the cloth. This causes an increase in carbon dioxide level in the individual’s blood. This increase in the carbon dioxide level stimulates increased effort to breathe. This effort plus the cloth produces the perception of ‘suffocation and incipient panic,’ i.e.,the perception of drowning. The individual does not breathe any water into his lungs. During those 20 to 40 seconds, water is continuously applied from a beight of 12 to 24 inches. After this period, the cloth is lifted, and the individual is allowed to breathe unimpeded for three or four full breaths. The sensation of drowning is immediately relieved by the removal of the cloth. The procedure may then be repeated. The water is usually applied from a canteen cup or small watering can with a spout. You have orally informed us that this procedure triggers an automatic physiological sensation of drowning that the individual cannot control even though he may be aware that he is in fact not drowning. You have also orally infomed us that it is likely that this procedure would not last more than 20 minutes in any one application.… You have informed us that this procedure does not inflict actual physical harm.… The waterboard, which inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever, does not, in our view, inflict ‘severe pain and suffering.’” Techniques Can Be Used in Conjunction with One Another - Bybee writes: “You have informed us that the use of these techniques would be on an as-needed basis and that not all of these techniques will necessarily be used. The interrogation team would use these techniques in some combination to convince [Zubaida] that the only way he can influence his surrounding environment is through cooperation. You have, however, informed us that you expect these techniques to be used in some sort of escalating fashion, culminating with the waterboard, though not necessarily ending with this technique. Moreover, you have also orally informed us that although some of these teclmiques may be used with more than once, that repetition wllI not be substantial because the techniques generally lose their effectiveness after several repetitions.” [Office of Legal Counsel, 8/1/2002 ; American Civil Liberties Union [PDF], 1/28/2009 ; Senate Intelligence Committee, 4/22/2009 ]Factual Background for Analysis - The opinion also gives the factual background for the legal analysis, including CIA research findings on the proposed techniques and their possible effect on Zubaida’s mental health. Much of those findings uses as a touchstone the results gleaned from the military’s SERE training, which uses stressful interrogation techniques, including a form of waterboarding, against US soldiers as part of their counterterrorism training. As the Senate Intelligence Committee will later write, Bybee’s “opinion discussed inquiries and statistics relating to possible adverse psychological reactions to SERE training.” The law clearly prohibits an interrogation method “specifically intended” to inflict “severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” No Technique Constitutes Torture, Bybee Concludes - Bybee’s opinion considers whether each of the proposed interrogation techniques, individually or in combination, might inflict “severe physical pain or suffering” or “severe mental pain or suffering” on Zubaida or other detainees. The opinion also considers whether interrogators using the technique would have the mental state necessary to violate the statute. Bybee concludes that none of the techniques used individually would inflict “severe physical pain or suffering.” Waterboarding would not inflict such harm, Bybee writes, because it inflicts neither physical damage or physical pain. Nor would it inflict extensive “physical suffering,” because the “suffering” would not extend for the period of time required by the legal definition of the term. None of the techniques, including waterboarding, would inflict “severe mental pain or suffering” as defined in the federal statute, Bybee writes. He bases this conclusion on reports from SERE training, where US soldiers are subjected to brief, strictly supervised sessions of waterboarding as part of their anti-torture training. And, Bybee writes, since the techniques individually do not constitute physical suffering, neither will they constitute such suffering in conbination, because they will not be combined in such a way as to reach that threshold. Bybee writes that the OLC lacks the information necessary to conclude whether combinations of those techniques would inflict severe mental suffering; however, because no evidence exists to suggest that a combination of the techniques would inflict an excessive level of mental harm, using the techniques in combination is not precluded. Bybee also concludes that any interrogator using these techniques would not have a specific intent to inflict severe mental or physical pain or suffering, because the circumstances surrounding the use of the techniques would preclude such intent. Therefore, Bybee concludes, none of these techniques violate the federal anti-torture statute. [American Civil Liberties Union [PDF], 1/28/2009 ; Senate Intelligence Committee, 4/22/2009 ]

Jay Bybee. [Source: Public domain]The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) sends a non-classified memo to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, offering the opinion that a policy allowing suspected al-Qaeda members to be tortured abroad “may be justified.” [US Department of Justice, 8/1/2002 ] This memo will later be nicknamed the “Golden Shield” by insiders in the hopes that it will protect government officials from later being charged with war crimes (see April 2002 and After). [ABC News, 4/9/2008]Multiple Authors - The 50-page “torture memo” is signed and authored by Jay S. Bybee, head of OLC, and co-authored by John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general. It is later revealed that Yoo authored the memo himself, in close consultation with Vice President Cheney’s chief adviser David Addington, and Bybee just signed off on it (see December 2003-June 2004). [Washington Post, 6/9/2004] Deputy White House counsel Timothy Flanigan also contributed to the memo. Addington contributed the claim that the president may authorize any interrogation method, even if it is plainly torture. Addington’s reasoning: US and treaty law “do not apply” to the commander in chief, because Congress “may no more regulate the president’s ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield.” [Washington Post, 6/25/2007]Statute Only Prohibits 'Extreme Acts' - Gonzales had formally asked for the OLC’s legal opinion in response to a request by the CIA for legal guidance. A former administration official, quoted by the Washington Post, says the CIA “was prepared to get more aggressive and re-learn old skills, but only with explicit assurances from the top that they were doing so with the full legal authority the president could confer on them.” [Washington Post, 6/9/2004] “We conclude that the statute, taken as a whole,” Bybee and Yoo write, “makes plain that it prohibits only extreme acts.” Addressing the question of what exactly constitute such acts of an extreme nature, the authors proceed to define torture as the infliction of “physical pain” that is “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” Purely mental pain or suffering can also amount to “torture under Section 2340,” but only if it results “in significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g. lasting for months or even years.” [Washington Post, 6/9/2004]Torture Legal and Defensible - Bybee and Yoo appear to conclude that any act short of torture, even though it may be cruel, inhuman or degrading, would be permissible. They examine, for example, “international decisions regarding the use of sensory deprivation techniques.” These cases, they notice, “make clear that while many of these techniques may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, they do not produce pain or suffering of the necessary intensity to meet the definition of torture. From these decisions, we conclude that there is a wide range of such techniques that will not rise to the level of torture.” More astounding is Bybee and Yoo’s view that even torture can be defensible. “We conclude,” they write, “that, under the current circumstances, necessity or self-defense may justify interrogation methods that might violate Section 2340A.” Inflicting physical or mental pain might be justified, Bybee and Yoo argue, “in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al-Qaeda terrorist network.” In other words, necessity or self-defense may justify torture. Moreover, “necessity and self-defense could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability.” [Washington Post, 6/8/2004] International anti-torture rules, furthermore, “may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations” of suspected terrorists. [US News and World Report, 6/21/2004] Laws prohibiting torture would “not apply to the president’s detention and interrogation of enemy combatants” in the “war on terror,” because the president has constitutional authority to conduct a military campaign. [Washington Post, 6/27/2004]Protecting US Officials from Prosecution - In 2007, author and reporter Charlie Savage will write: “In case an interrogator was ever prosecuted for violating the antitorture law (see October 21, 1994 and January 26, 1998, Yoo laid out page after page of legal defenses he could mount to get the charges dismissed. And should someone balk at this strained interpretation of the law, Yoo offered his usual trump card: Applying the antitorture law to interrogations authorized by the president would be unconstitutional, since only the commander in chief could set standards for questioning prisoners.” [Savage, 2007, pp. 155-156]Virtually Unrestricted Authority of President - “As commander in chief,” the memo argues, “the president has the constitutional authority to order interrogations of enemy combatants to gain intelligence information concerning the military plans of the enemy.” [Washington Post, 6/9/2004] According to some critics, this judgment—which will be echoed in a March 2003 draft Pentagon report (see March 6, 2003)—ignores important past rulings such as the 1952 Supreme Court decision in Youngstown Steel and Tube Co v. Sawyer, which determined that the president, even in wartime, is subject to US laws. [Washington Post, 6/9/2004] The memo also says that US Congress “may no more regulate the president’s ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield.” [Washington Post, 6/27/2004]Ashcroft Refuses to Release Memo - After the memo’s existence is revealed, Attorney General John Ashcroft denies senators’ requests to release it, and refuses to say if or how the president was involved in the discussion. “The president has a right to hear advice from his attorney general, in confidence,” he says. [New York Times, 6/8/2004; Bloomberg, 6/8/2004; Washington Post, 6/9/2004] Privately, Ashcroft is so irritated by Yoo’s hand-in-glove work with the White House that he begins disparagingly referring to him as “Dr. Yes.” [New York Times, 10/4/2007]Only 'Analytical' - Responding to questions about the memo, White House press secretary Scott McClellan will claim that the memo “was not prepared to provide advice on specific methods or techniques,” but was “analytical.” But the 50-page memo seems to have been considered immensely important, given its length and the fact that it was signed by Bybee. “Given the topic and length of opinion, it had to get pretty high-level attention,” Beth Nolan, a former White House counsel from 1999-2001, will tell reporters. This view is confirmed by another former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer who says that unlike documents signed by deputies in the Office of Legal Counsel, memorandums signed by the Office’s head are considered legally binding. [Washington Post, 6/9/2004]Memo Will be Withdrawn - Almost two years later, the OLC’s new head, Jack Goldsmith, will withdraw the torture memos, fearing that they go far beyond anything countenanced by US law (see December 2003-June 2004). Memo Addresses CIA Concerns - The administration, particularly the axis of neoconservatives centered around Cheney’s office, has enthusiastically advocated the use of violent, abusive, and sometimes tortuous interrogation techniques, though the US has never endorsed such tactics before, and many experts say such techniques are counterproductive. The CIA, responding to the desires from the White House, hastily put together a rough program after consulting with intelligence officials from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where detainees are routinely tortured and killed in captivity, and after studying methods used by former Soviet Union interrogators. The legal questions were continuous. The former deputy legal counsel for the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, Paul Kelbaugh, recalls in 2007: “We were getting asked about combinations—‘Can we do this and this at the same time?… These approved techniques, say, withholding food, and 50-degree temperature—can they be combined?’ Or ‘Do I have to do the less extreme before the more extreme?’” The “torture memo” is designed to address these concerns. [New York Times, 10/4/2007]

Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), signs off on a secret opinion that approves a long, disturbing list of harsh interrogation techniques proposed by the CIA. The list includes waterboarding, a form of near-drowning that some consider mock execution, and which has been prosecuted as a war crime in the US since at least 1901. The list only forbids one proposed technique: burying a prisoner alive (see February 4-5, 2004). Yoo concludes that such harsh tactics do not fall under the 1984 Convention Against Torture (see October 21, 1994 and July 22, 2002) because they will not be employed with “specific intent” to torture. Also, the methods do not fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court because “a state cannot be bound by treaties to which it has not consented”; also, since the interrogations do not constitute a “widespread and systematic” attack on civilian populations, and since neither Taliban nor al-Qaeda detainees are considered prisoners of war (see February 7, 2002), the ICC has no purview. The same day that Yoo sends his memo, Yoo’s boss, OLC chief Jay Bybee, sends a classified memo to the CIA regarding the interrogation of al-Qaeda members and including information detailing “potential interrogation methods and the context in which their use was contemplated” (see August 1, 2002). [US Department of Justice, 8/1/2002; Washington Post, 6/25/2007; American Civil Liberties Union [PDF], 1/28/2009 ] Yoo will later claim that he warns White House lawyers, as well as Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, that it would be dangerous to allow military interrogators to use the harshest interrogation techniques, because the military might overuse the techniques or exceed the limitations. “I always thought that only the CIA should do this, but people at the White House and at [the Defense Department] felt differently,” Yoo will later say. Yoo’s words are prophetic: such excessively harsh techniques will be used by military interrogators at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere. [Washington Post, 6/25/2007]

According to his own later statement (see July 1, 2009), Saudi detainee Ahmed Muhammad al-Darbi is tortured at Bagram Air Force Base by US forces. During the approximately eight months he is held at Bagram, al-Darbi is allegedly subjected to: Isolation during the first two weeks, when he does not even know he is in Afghanistan; Stress positions. He will say: “While I was questioned, I was kept for many hours in painful positions. For example, I would be forced to kneel with my hands cuffed above my head”; Sleep deprivation—because he is forced to maintain the stress positions overnight, he cannot sleep; Hooding, including during the interrogations. He will say: “The hood they used had a sort of rope or drawstring that they would pull tight around my neck. The darkness, combined with little sleep, would leave me disoriented”; High temperatures; Bright lights in a cell where he is kept; Loud music; Denial of time to pray; Insufficient food, which was “inedible”; Photos are taken that humiliate him. His hood is taken off on these occasions and there are “several US agents, male and female, standing around”; Beatings; US officials allegedly spray water on his face and then blow a powder he will later say may have been pepper onto him. The water absorbs the powder, which burns his skin and makes his nose run; Hairs are ripped from his chest and head by US personnel; and US officials threaten to send him to Israeli, Egyptian, or Afghan jails for torture and rape. Al-Darbi will also say that a US solider named Damien Corsetti is often present during the interrogations. Corsetti, a “big, heavy man,” sometimes steps on al-Darbi’s handcuffs while he is lying on the floor with his arms above his head, causing them to tighten around his wrists. On one occasion, Corsetti kneels on his chest, pressing down with all his weight until he stops breathing and another guard pulls Corsetti off. False Statements - Al-Darbi makes a number of statements incriminating himself at Bagram, but will later say that they are false, adding: “The military guards and interrogators would show me pictures of people, and told me I must identify them and confess things about them. After they tortured me, I would say what they wanted me to say. I was fed detailed statements and names of individuals to whom I was to attribute certain activities.” The military personnel then say he has to repeat these statements to other interrogators, from the FBI, and they will continue to abuse him if he does not do so. Al-Darbi repeats the statements to three FBI agents, two of whom he knows as “Tom” and “Jerry,” but does not sign a written statement. 'Hard Labor' - Al-Darbi is also forced to perform what he will call “degrading, hard labor” at Bagram. This consists of replacing the full port-a-potty buckets with empty buckets, sweeping the floor, and, on one occasion, scrubbing the entire floor with a toothbrush. In addition, he is forced to carry boxes filled with water bottles while his hands are cuffed together, which allegedly causes him sciatic and back pain for several years. Witnessing the Abuse of Dilawar - Al-Darbi will also say that he witnesses the abuse of an Afghan prisoner called Dilawar (see December 5-9, 2002), who is shackled up in a cage near where he is held. [al-Darbi, 7/1/2009]

The interrogation and abuse of suspect Mohamed al-Khatani (sometimes spelled “al-Qahtani”—see February 11, 2008) at Guantanamo Bay begins. He is alleged to have tried to enter the US to participate in the 9/11 plot as the twentieth hijacker. He is classified as “Detainee 063.” He is subjected to 160 days of isolation in a pen flooded 24 hours a day with bright artificial light, that treatment starting well before harsher interrogation tactics begin six weeks later (see November 23, 2002). The tactics include: He is interrogated for 48 of 54 days, for 18 to 20 hours at a stretch. He is stripped naked and straddled by taunting female guards, in an exercise called “invasion of space by a female.” He is forced to wear women’s underwear on his head and to put on a bra. He is threatened by dogs, placed on a leash, and told that his mother was a whore. He is stripped naked, shaved, and forced to bark like a dog. He is forced to listen to American pop music at ear-splitting volume. He is subjected to a phony kidnapping (see Mid-2003). He is forced to live in a cell deprived of heat He is given large quantities of intravenous liquids and denied access to a toilet He is deprived of sleep for days on end. He is forcibly given enemas, and is hospitalized multiple time for hypothermia. Impact - Towards the end of the extended interrogation session, Al-Khatani’s heart rate drops so precipitously (to 35 beats a minute) that he is placed under cardiac monitoring. Interrogators meticulously note his reactions to his treatment, and make the following notes at various times: “Detainee began to cry. Visibly shaken. Very emotional. Detainee cried. Disturbed. Detainee began to cry. Detainee bit the IV tube completely in two. Started moaning. Uncomfortable. Moaning. Began crying hard spontaneously. Crying and praying. Very agitated. Yelled. Agitated and violent. Detainee spat. Detainee proclaimed his innocence. Whining. Dizzy. Forgetting things. Angry. Upset. Yelled for Allah. Urinated on himself. Began to cry. Asked God for forgiveness. Cried. Cried. Became violent. Began to cry. Broke down and cried. Began to pray and openly cried. Cried out to Allah several times. Trembled uncontrollably.” In November 2002, an FBI agent describes al-Khatani’s condition, writing that he “was talking to non-existent people, reporting hearing voices, [and] crouching in a corner of the cell covered with a sheet for hours on end.” Al-Khatani confesses to an array of terrorist activities and then recants them; he begs his interrogators to be allowed to commit suicide. The last days of al-Khatani’s interrogation session is particularly intense, since interrogators know that their authorization to use harsh techniques may be rescinded at any time. They get no useful information from him. By the end of the last interrogation, an Army investigator observes that al-Khatani has “black coals for eyes.” [New Yorker, 2/27/2006; Vanity Fair, 5/2008]Reaching the Threshold - In the summer of 2007, Dr. Abigail Seltzer, a psychiatrist who specializes in trauma victims, reviews the logs of al-Khatani’s interrogations. Seltzer notes that while torture is not a medical concept: “[O]ver the period of 54 days there is enough evidence of distress to indicate that it would be very surprising indeed if it had not reached the threshold of severe mental pain…. If you put 12 clinicians in a room and asked them about this interrogation log, you might get different views about the effect and long-term consequences of these interrogation techniques. But I doubt that any one of them would claim that this individual had not suffered severe mental distress at the time of his interrogation, and possibly also severe physical distress.” Everything that is done to al-Khatani is part of the repertoire of interrogation techniques approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (see December 2, 2002). Fundamental Violation of Human Rights - In 2008, law professor Phillippe Sands will write: “Whatever he may have done, Mohammed al-Khatani was entitled to the protections afforded by international law, including Geneva and the torture convention. His interrogation violated those conventions. There can be no doubt that he was treated cruelly and degraded, that the standards of Common Article 3 were violated, and that his treatment amounts to a war crime. If he suffered the degree of severe mental distress prohibited by the torture convention, then his treatment crosses the line into outright torture. These acts resulted from a policy decision made right at the top, not simply from ground-level requests in Guantanamo, and they were supported by legal advice from the president’s own circle.” [Vanity Fair, 5/2008]

The district court at Norfolk finds that the Mobbs declaration (see July 25, 2002) “falls far short” of providing a basis for the continuing detention of “enemy combatant” Yaser Esam Hamdi without due process of law. “If the Court were to accept the Mobbs Declaration as sufficient justification for detaining Hamdi…, this Court would be acting as little more than a rubber stamp,” judge Robert Doumar writes in his ruling. He again orders the government to produce additional evidence, including copies of Hamdi’s statements, notes by his interrogators, statements by members of the Northern Alliance and relevant names, dates, and locations. [Yaser Esam Hamdi, et al. v. Donald Rumsfeld, et al., 8/16/2002 ; Washington Post, 1/9/2003] Doumar says the government’s arguments lead “to more questions than answers.” For example: The Mobbs Declaration does not say what authority Mobbs has, as “Special Advisor” to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, to determine the classification of a detainee. He says that during the August 13 hearing (see August 13, 2002), the government’s attorney was unable to do so. [Yaser Esam Hamdi, et al. v. Donald Rumsfeld, et al., 8/16/2002 ] The government has provided no reason “for Hamdi to be in solitary confinement, incommunicado for over four months and being held some eight-to-ten months without any charges of any kind.” [Yaser Esam Hamdi, et al. v. Donald Rumsfeld, et al., 8/16/2002 ] Though it is claimed that Hamdi was “affiliated with a Taliban military unit and received weapons training,” the declaration makes no attempt to explain the nature of this “affiliation” or why the “affiliation” warrants the classification of Hamdi as an enemy combatant. Furthermore, the declaration “never claims that Hamdi was fighting for the Taliban, nor that he was a member of the Taliban.” [Yaser Esam Hamdi, et al. v. Donald Rumsfeld, et al., 8/16/2002 ] Assertions in the document concerning statements made by Hamdi appear to be paraphrased. Hamdi’s actual statements are not provided. “Due to the ease with which such statements may be taken out of context, the Court is understandably suspicious of the Respondent’s assertions regarding statements that Hamdi is alleged to have made,” the court ruling says. [Yaser Esam Hamdi, et al. v. Donald Rumsfeld, et al., 8/16/2002 ]

The Los Angeles Times reports that “despite intense interrogations and investigations,” no senior al-Qaeda leaders appear to be amongst the nearly 600 detainees at the Guantanamo prison. One US official says that some usual intelligence has been gained from the detainees, but “it’s not roll-up-plots, knock-your-socks-off-kind of stuff.” This official says the detainees are
mostly “low-and middle-level” fighters and supporters, not “the big-time guys” high enough to help unravel plots and understand al-Qaeda’s structure. Another official similarly says there are “no big fish” there. “Some of these guys literally don’t know the world is round.” The Times also notes that several European countries “have quietly offered to take prisoners home and put them on trial if US officials can provide evidence that they have committed a crime.” But none has been released for trial so far. [Los Angeles Times, 8/18/2002] The New York Times will confirm in June 2004 that no al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders are being held at the prison and that in fact the vast majority are innocent of any militant connections (see June 21, 2004). Some al-Qaeda leaders will be sent into the prison from secret CIA prisons in September 2006 (see September 2-3, 2006).

Judge Robert Doumar of the US District Court in Norfolk stays proceedings in the case of “enemy combatant” Yaser Esam Hamdi and issues a request to the Fourth Circuit to respond to the question “whether the Mobbs Declaration, standing alone, is sufficient as a matter of law to allow a meaningful judicial review of Yaser Esam Hamdi’s classification as an enemy combatant.” [Certification Order and Stay. Yaser Esam Hamdi, et al. v. Donald Rumsfeld, et al., 8/21/2002 ]

In Asadabad, Afghanistan, US troops arrest Haji Rohullah Wakil, a local leader, together with 11 of his associates. They are flown by helicopter to Bagram air base. [New York Times, 8/28/2002] One of Wakil’s associates, Abdul Qayyum, will later tell the Associated Press of his experience at Bagram. Qayyum stays at the base for two months and five days, during which time he says he is systematically deprived of sleep, forced to stand for long periods of time and humiliated by female US soldiers. All the time, he is forbidden to talk to his fellow detainees. He is held in a large hall with about 100 other prisoners divided by wire mesh into several cages or cells, each containing 10 people. The lights are always on, washing is allowed for only five minutes a week, and a bucket is provided for use as a toilet. When a military spokesperson is later asked to comment on Rahman’s account, the spokesperson says it sounds only partially true (see January 22, 2002). [Associated Press, 3/14/2003]

Militant training camp facilitator Abu Zubaida is subjected to one more waterboarding session at the insistence of CIA headquarters. Zubaida has been subject to the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation techniques for some time, and the agency team applying the techniques considers him compliant and wants to stop using them. However, according to a senior officer at the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, somebody thinks that Zubaida is continuing to withhold information. This person or persons generates substantial pressure from CIA headquarters to continue waterboarding, and senior officials at the agency’s Directorate of Operations decide to continue. Some people are sent to the facility where Zubaida is being held to observe the final waterboarding session he is subjected to. These people then report back that the enhanced techniques are no longer required. [Central Intelligence Agency, 5/7/2004, pp. 84-85 ]

Michael H. Mobbs, the special adviser to the undersecretary of defense for policy, files a six-page document asserting that “enemy combatant” Jose Padilla (see June 9, 2002) “has been closely associated with known members and leaders of the al-Qaeda terrorist network”; that he trained at al-Qaeda camps and “met with senior Osama Bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaida,” whom he approached “with [a] proposal to conduct terrorist operations within the United States”; and that he talked about a plan “to build and detonate a ‘radiological dispersal device…’ within the United States, possibly in Washington, D.C.” But the document also acknowledges that the “plan” was “still in the initial planning stages.” Finally, the declaration states that “it is believed that al-Qaeda members directed Padilla to return to the United States to conduct reconnaissance and/or other attacks on behalf of al-Qaeda.” The declaration concedes that the evidence on which its assertions are based are not entirely solid, noting that its intelligence sources “have not been completely candid about their association with al-Qaeda and their terrorist activities” and that “some information provided by the sources remains uncorroborated and may be part of an effort to mislead or confuse US officials.” [Fox News, 8/28/2002; Washington Post, 9/1/2002; Newsweek, 6/9/2004]

Although some members of both the House and Senate intelligence committees are briefed about a CIA detainee interrogation program around this time (see September 2002), the briefing is not received by all committee members. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Bob Graham (D-FL) will later say that the information is not shared with all committee members because the activities are regarded as covert. Within the intelligence committees, the information is restricted to the “gang of four”—the two top members from each committee. Graham will later complain about this: “Not only should I have been briefed [about the CIA interrogation program] but the entire committee [should have] been briefed. The only basis for what they called these covert gang of four briefings is where the president has indicated there’s an action that’s being undertaken for which the United States wants to have deniability. It’s not a blanket for every subject that the intelligence community might be involved with. In my judgment, this was not a covert operation and should have been briefed to the entire intelligence committee.” [CNN, 12/13/2007] However, President Bush, who would usually be briefed on activities like the interrogation program, is not briefed on it, precisely because it is not regarded as a covert activity, but is classified as a normal part of “intelligence collection” (see April 2002 and After).

Some congressional leaders are reportedly briefed on the CIA’s detainee interrogation program, but what is actually said will later be disputed. The briefing is described as “a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk,” and apparently mentions waterboarding and information gleaned from detainees, according to two unnamed officials who are present and will later talk to the Washington Post. Few, if Any, Objections Raised - Due to the feeling of “panic” following 9/11, the legislators’ attitude is described as, “We don’t care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people,” and two even ask if the methods are “tough enough.” The briefing, apparently one of the first of a series of around 30 private briefings on the CIA’s interrogation program, is for the “Gang of Eight,” the four top congressional leaders and the senior member from each party on the House and Senate intelligence committees. However, the methods used are only described in some of the briefings, and some of the meetings are just for the “gang of four”—intelligence committee members only. The groups are said to be so small because they concern highly secret covert activities, although it will later be suggested that the administration’s motivation is “partly to hide from view an embarrassing practice that the CIA considered vital but outsiders would almost certainly condemn as abhorrent.” One of the committee members present is Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and other officials that receive such briefings are reported to include Jane Harman (D-CA), Bob Graham (D-FL), Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Porter Goss (R-FL) and Pat Roberts (R-KS). Harman is said to be the only one to object at any point. The attendees’ recollections of the meeting will later vary greatly. Goss will say, “Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing… And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement,” although this may not be a reference to this specific meeting. Graham, who will leave the Senate Intelligence Committee in January 2003, will later say he has no memory of being told about waterboarding, “Personally, I was unaware of it, so I couldn’t object.” A “source familiar with Pelosi’s position” will say that she participates in a discussion of enhanced interrogation techniques, but understands they are at the planning stage at this time and are not in use. [Washington Post, 12/9/2007]Restrictions on Information - Graham will later describe the limitations placed on legislators who receive such briefings: “In addition to the fact that the full members of the committee can’t hear what’s happening, those who are in the room are very restricted. You can’t take any notes. You can’t bring anyone with you and after the meeting, you cannot discuss what you’ve heard. So that if, for instance, there’s an issue about, is this legal under the Geneva Convention, you can’t go to someone who’s an expert on that subject and get their opinion. It’s a very limiting situation.” [CNN, 12/13/2007]Secret Interrogations Already Underway - The CIA has been conducting aggressive interrogations since at least May 2002 (see Mid-May 2002 and After), but is has no firm legal basis to perform them until the Justice Department gives approval in August 2002 (see August 1, 2002). CIA Director George Tenet will later comment in a 2007 book, “After we received the written Department of Justice guidance on the interrogation issue, we briefed the chairmen and ranking members of our oversight committees. While they were not asked to formally approve the program as it was done under the President’s unilateral authorities, I can recall no objections being raised.” [MSNBC, 9/13/2007]

The Pentagon orders a broad assessment of the intelligence-gathering efforts at Guantanamo in response to complaints about the low quality of intelligence that has come from the Guantanamo prison thus far. Officials at the Pentagon and Guantanamo believe the detainees are being uncooperative, and that new interrogation techniques are needed. A senior official formerly stationed at Guantanamo will later recall: “As time went on, people wanted to do more. The detainees were resistant. They knew we weren’t going to torture them. So we needed to come up with a Plan B for the small group of people who wouldn’t talk and who we thought did have intelligence.” [New York Times, 6/21/2004] This view is shared with the lawyers at the Pentagon. The Principle Deputy to Department of Defense General Counsel Daniel J. Dell’Orto will also say at a later date: “As we come through the summer of 2002, a couple of things become apparent: One, some of these people have been trained in counter-interrogation techniques, resistance techniques. We have found, by that time, on the battlefield, the al-Qaeda training manual… In that manual is a chapter devoted to resisting our techniques. Those techniques are published. They’re unclassified. The [Army] field manual [34-52, dealing with interrogations] is out on the street for anyone to look at. And if you look at the document, the training manual, you’ll see how they go and prepare their fighters to resist our techniques.” [White House, 7/22/2004] The assessment will lead to technical improvements, such as changes to the intelligence databases, and the development of a 30-day course for interrogators and analysts at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, nicknamed “Terrorism 101.” [New York Times, 6/21/2004] The training, according to a Pentagon report, is “developed in response to requirements surfaced during interrogation operations at JTF-GTMO, specifically to prepare reserve interrogators and order of battle analysts for deployment to JTF-GTMO.” [US Department of Defense, 8/23/2004 ]

Abdulsalam Ali Abdulrahman, a section chief in Yemen’s Political Security Organization, the Yemeni equivalent of the FBI, disappears in Cairo, Egypt, after going there on business. Abdulrahman, who appears to have had foreknowledge of 9/11 (see August 12, 2000), calls his family after arriving in Cairo, but is apparently kidnapped by Egyptian intelligence and handed over to the CIA. However, it is unclear whether the CIA takes him to Azerbaijan or Afghanistan. [Vidino, 2006, pp. 230; Grey, 2007, pp. 252] He will later be taken to Guantanamo (see September 20, 2004).

A CIA analyst visits Guantanamo and returns convinced that war crimes are being committed there. According to a former White House official, the analyst concludes that “if we captured some people who weren’t terrorists when we got them, they are now.” The CIA agent estimates at least more than half of the prisoners at Guantanamo do not belong there. [Guardian, 9/13/2004] John A. Gordon, Deputy National Security Adviser for combating terrorism, a former deputy director of the CIA and a retired four-star general, reads the highly critical report on Guantanamo by the CIA analyst in the early autumn of 2002. The analyst’s account of US activities at Guantanamo, he says, is “totally out of character with the American value system.” He says he also believes “that if the actions at Guantanamo ever became public, it’d be damaging to the president.” He is convinced the report is important material. “We got it up to Condi [National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice],” he recalls. Gordon is most concerned about whether many of the prisoners at Guantanamo are not in fact innocent. “It was about how many more people are being held there that shouldn’t be,” a former White House official tells Seymour Hersh. “Have we really got the right people?” The briefing for Rice does not center on the treatment of the prisoners, but on questions of practicality: “Are we getting any intelligence? What is the process for sorting these people?” The concerns are serious enough for Rice to call a meeting at the White House with Gordon and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Rice allegedly says, “Let’s get the story right.” Rumsfeld seems to be agreeing and looks willing to deal with the problem. However, according to the disappointed White House official, “The Pentagon went into a full-court stall.” He says, “I was naive enough to believe that when a cabinet member says he’s going to take action, he will.” [Guardian, 9/13/2004]

A memo prepared for Colonel Brittain Mallow, the commander of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF), documents objections raised by Mallow to the harsh interrogation methods—torture—being used at Guantanamo Bay. Mallow’s memo cites “unacceptable methods” involving “threats,” “discomfort,” and “sensory deprivation,” and provides guidance to CITF agents on permissible interrogation methods for use on detainees. Mallow instructs his unit not to take part in “any questionable” interrogation techniques at the prison. In 2008, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) will observe, “The memo suggests that CITF expressed disapproval of abusive methods used at Guantanamo as far back as September 2002.” [American Civil Liberties Union, 5/14/2008]

Ramzi Bin al-Shibh shortly after arrest. The name shown under his face is one of his aliases. (Note: this picture is from a video presentation on prisoners the Pakistani government gave to BBC filmmakers. It has been adjusted to remove some blue tinge.) [Source: BBC's "The New Al-Qaeda."]In 2002 and 2003, many of the highest-ranking al-Qaeda detainees are subjected to waterboarding and other forms of interrogation generally considered to be torture (see May 2002-2003). However, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, captured in Pakistan in September 2002 and sent to a secret CIA prison (see September 11, 2002), is not waterboarded. NBC News will later claim that he agreed to talk with just the threat of waterboarding. “Bin al-Shibh was viewed as a weakling and a narcissist and the agency played heavily on that. He quickly became the most cooperative of those detained…” However, by the time bin al-Shbih is charged before a military tribunal in 2007, he once again is refusing to talk (see March 9-April 28, 2007). [MSNBC, 9/13/2007]Tortured in Jordan Instead? - It is unknown what other interrogation techniques may have been used on him. In contradiction to the allegation that bin al-Shibh broke easily by the mere threat of torture, it will later be reported that in late 2002, he was secretly transferred to Jordanian custody for a time so he could be tortured by the Jordanian government (see Late 2002).

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s (KSM’s) children, who were captured in a September 2002 raid on a house KSM used (see September 11, 2002), are allegedly tortured following their capture. A statement that they are tortured is made in a submission to a Guantanamo Bay hearing to determine the status of a detainee called Majid Khan. The submission is made by Khan’s father, based on information from another of his sons. It reads: “The Pakistani guards told my son that the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs and were denied food and water by other guards. They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.” [US department of Defense, 4/15/2007 ] Human Rights Watch, based on eyewitness accounts, says that KSM’s children are held in an adult detention center (see June 7, 2007), and KSM also says that his children are abused in US custody (see March 10-April 15, 2007). [US Department of Defense, 3/10/2007 ; Reuters, 6/7/2007]

The FBI arrests six US citizens with a Yemeni background, on information provided by the CIA: Sahim Alwan, Mukhtar al-Bakri, Faysal Galab, Yahya Goba, Shafel Mosed and Yaseinn Taher. Five are arrested in their hometown Lackawanna, a suburb of Buffalo, New York. The sixth, who is connected to the other five, is arrested in Bahrain and then transferred to the US. [CBS News, 11/9/2002] They are hereafter nicknamed “the Lackawanna Six.” They reportedly traveled to Afghanistan in April and May 2001 to join in Islamic jihad and receive military training at the Al Farooq training camp run by al-Qaeda (see April-August 2001). They also allegedly met with Osama bin Laden (see (June 2001)). They are believed to have been encouraged to go to Afghanistan by two American veteran mujaheddin, Juma al-Dosari and Kamal Derwish, who fought in the war in Bosnia and who visited Lackawanna in early 2001. [Washington Post, 7/29/2003] One month later, a federal jury indicts the Lackawanna Six on two counts of providing material support to terrorism. They are charged with supporting terrorism. If found guilty, they could face up to 15 years in prison. All of them plead not guilty. [CBS News, 10/22/2002]

Several high-level Bush administration lawyers arrive in Guantanamo. The group includes White House counsel Alberto Gonzales; Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington, who had helped the Justice Department craft its “torture memo” (see August 1, 2002); CIA legal counsel John Rizzo, who had asked the Justice Department for details about how interrogation methods could be implemented (see June 22, 2004); and the Pentagon’s general counsel, William J. Haynes. They are at Guantanamo to discuss the case of suspected “20th hijacker” Mohamed al-Khatani (see August 8, 2002-January 15, 2003). Pressure from Washington - The commander of the Guantanamo facility, Major General Michael Dunlavey, will recall: “They wanted to know what we were doing to get to this guy, and Addington was interested in how we were managing it… They brought ideas with them which had been given from sources in DC. They came down to observe and talk.” Dunlavey will say that he was pressured by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself to expedite the interrogation and use extraordinary means to squeeze information from the suspect. “I’ve got a short fuse on this to get it up the chain,” Dunlavey recalls. “I was on a timeline. This guy may have been the key to the survival of the US.” Asked how high up the pressure was from, Dunlavey will say, “It must have been all the way to the White House.” Rumsfeld is “directly and regularly involved” in all the discussions of interrogations. 'Do Whatever Needed to Be Done' - Staff judge advocate Lieutenant Colonel Diane Beaver will recall that Addington is “definitely the guy in charge,” taking control of the discussions. Gonzales is quiet. Haynes, a close friend and colleague of Addington’s, seems most interested in how the military commissions would function to try and convict detainees. The lawyers meet with intelligence officials and themselves witness several interrogations. Beaver will recall that the message from Addington and his group is “Do whatever needed to be done.” In essence, the Guantanamo interrogators and commanders are given a green light from the administration’s top lawyers, representing President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the CIA. [Vanity Fair, 5/2008]

Maher Arar. [Source: Chris Wattie / Reuters]On his way home to Montreal, Maher Arar, a 34-year old IT specialist, makes a stopover at JFK International Airport in New York. He is returning alone from a family holiday with his wife and daughter in Tunisia. At the airport, Arar, who was born in Syria and has dual Syrian and Canadian citizenship, is arrested by officers wearing badges from the FBI and the New York Police Department. Arar happens to be on a terrorist watch list. A US official later says Arar has the names of “a large number of known al-Qaeda operatives, affiliates or associates” on him. [Washington Post, 11/19/2003] Canadian Solicitor General Wayne Easter later admits that Canada contributed information that led to Arar’s arrest. [Washington Post, 11/20/2003] In an interrogation room Arar asks for an attorney, but, as he later publishes on his website, is told he has no right to a lawyer because he is not an American citizen. Subsequent requests for a lawyer are ignored and the interrogation continues until midnight. His interrogators are particularly interested in another Canadian by the name of Abdullah Almalki. Arar says he has worked together with his brother, Nazih Almalki, but knows Abdullah only casually. Then, with his hands and feet in shackles, he is taken to a nearby building and put in a cell around 1 a.m. “I could not sleep,” Arar later writes. “I was very, very scared and disoriented.” [Amnesty International, 8/19/2003; CounterPunch, 11/6/2003; CBS News, 1/22/2004; Washington Post, 5/11/2004; CBC News, 11/26/2004; Maher Arar, 1/15/2005]

Cofer Black, then director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, speaks about US interrogation policy during a 9/11 Congressional Inquiry hearing. “This is a very highly classified area, but I have to say that all you need to know: there was a before-9/11 and an after-9/11. After 9/11 the gloves came off.” [Newsweek, 5/24/2004] He apparently made similar comments on September 19, 2001, to the first CIA operatives heading to Afghanistan after 9/11 (see September 19, 2001).

On the second day of his detention, Maher Arar, a Canadian, is questioned for eight hours. At the end of his interrogation, a US immigration agent enters the room and asks Arar if he would like to go to Syria. “No way,” Arar recalls saying. “I wanted to go home. He said you are a special interest. They asked me to sign a form. They would not let me read it, but I just signed it. I was exhausted and confused.” [Washington Post, 11/12/2003] He has not slept since coming off an airplane 27 hours ago. He is then taken to the New York Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), where he is strip-searched. A doctor gives him injection, which he is told is a vaccination. But the doctor refuses to explain what the injected fluid is. “My arm was red for almost two weeks from that,” Arar will later remember. For the first few days, Arar is interrogated several times and he is granted neither a hearing nor provided the opportunity to contact family, friends, or a lawyer. He is shown a document that says he is accused of being a member of al-Qaeda. On October 2, six days after his arrest, Arar is allowed to make a two-minute phone call. He contacts his mother-in-law and asks her to get him a lawyer. The next day or the day after, he fills out a form saying he prefers to be sent to Canada, not Syria. On October 4, he receives a visit from Canadian consul Maureen Girvan, whom he tells of his fear of being deported to Syria. That won’t happen, she assures him. A lawyer finally visits Arar on October 5, who tells him not to sign anything without her being present. [Maher Arar, 1/15/2005] The following night of October 6, guards take Arar out of his cell, saying his lawyer is waiting to see him. He is led into a room with seven or eight people, but his lawyer is not present. He is then informed that “he”—the lawyer—has refused to come. His lawyer, however, is female. The theme of the subsequent questioning is Syria and why he does not want to go there. “I told them,” Arar recalls, “I would be tortured there. I told them I had not done my military service; I am a Sunni Muslim; my mother’s cousin had been accused of being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and was put in prison for nine years.” He is again asked to sign a document and he refuses. At 3 a.m. he is returned to his cell. [Maher Arar, 1/15/2005]

High-ranking al-Qaeda leader Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri is captured in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Al-Nashiri is believed to have played a role in the 1998 African embassy bombings (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998), attended a 9/11 planning summit in Malaysia in 2000 (see January 5-8, 2000), was one of the masterminds of the 2000 USS Cole bombing (see October 12, 2000), and planned the 2002 bombing of the French oil tanker Limburg (see October 6, 2002). Said to be chief of al-Qaeda’s operations in the Persian Gulf region, he is taking flight lessons in the remote UAE region of Umm Al-Qaiwain when he is arrested by local authorities and then turned over to the CIA. An unknown number of other al-Qaeda suspects are arrested with him, but apparently they are considered less important and are not handed to the CIA as well. Most reports indicate he is arrested on November 8, 2002, about two weeks before the first media leaks about his arrest. [New York Times, 12/23/2002] However, US News and World Report will later claim that he was arrested even earlier, early in October 2002. “Al-Nashiri soon broke; he even let officials listen in as he called his associates.” This leads to intelligence on Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, a top al-Qaeda operative, and the US assassinates him with a missile strike on November 3, 2002, after trailing him for about two weeks (see November 3, 2002). [US News and World Report, 6/2/2003] Al-Nashiri will remain in secret CIA prisons until 2006 and then will be transfered to the Guantanamo Bay prison (see September 2-3, 2006).

The Army’s senior SERE psychologist, Lieutenant Colonel Morgan Banks, warns interrogators at Guantanamo against using SERE techniques in their questioning of detainees. The SERE program, which trains US soldiers to resist torture, has had its tactics “reverse-engineered” to be used against suspected terrorists (see December 2001, January 2002 and After, and July 2002). In an e-mail, Banks writes: “[T]he use of physical pressures brings with it a large number of potential negative side effects.… When individuals are gradually exposed to increasing levels of discomfort, it is more common for them to resist harder.… If individuals are put under enough discomfort, i.e. pain, they will eventually do whatever it takes to stop the pain. This will increase the amount of information they tell the interrogator, but it does not mean the information is accurate. In fact, it usually decreases the reliability of the information because the person will say whatever he believes will stop the pain.… Bottom line: the likelihood that the use of physical pressures will increase the delivery of accurate information from a detainee is very low. The likelihood that the use of physical pressures will increase the level of resistance in a detainee is very high.” [Huffington Post, 4/21/2009]

Judge Thomas S. Ellis III sentences John Walker Lindh, as expected (see July 15, 2002), to 20 years in a federal penitentiary. With a 15 percent credit for good behavior and time served, he could be released in 16 years and two months. [CBS News, 10/4/2002; CBS News, 10/4/2002]

Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, in his capacity as acting attorney general, signs an order to transfer Maher Arar from the US to Syria, stating, according to officials speaking on condition of anonymity, that sending him to Canada would be “prejudicial to the interests of the United States.” Arar has dual Canadian and Syrian citizenship and has expressed his fear of being tortured once extradited to Syria. One year later, Imad Moustafa, Syria’s charge d’affaires in Washington says Syria had no reason to detain Arar, but that his country has agreed to take him as a favor to the US and to win its goodwill. He also says US intelligence officials have told their Syrian counterparts that Arar is a member of al-Qaeda. [Washington Post, 11/19/2003]

FBI agent Robert Fuller interrogates Canadian citizen Omar Khadr at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Fuller is an FBI agent who failed to locate the 9/11 hijackers in the US before 9/11 (see September 4, 2001, September 4-5, 2001, and September 4-5, 2001), while Khadr is a minor accused of throwing a hand grenade that killed a US soldier in Afghanistan. The interrogation lasts from October 7 to October 22. On the first day, Fuller shows Khadr a black-and-white photograph provided by the FBI in Massachusetts of Maher Arar, a Canadian terror suspect the US has been holding in New York (see September 26, 2002). Fuller will later say that Khadr identifies Arar as someone he has seen in a safe house run by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and that he also “may have” seen Arar at a terror training camp near Kabul. However, at the time Khadr says he saw Arar in Afghanistan—September and October 2001—Arar was first in the US and then in Canada under surveillance by the local authorities, according to Walter Ruiz, a lawyer who will later represent Khadr. Ruiz will also point out that it takes Khadr several minutes to identify Arar. Another of Khadr’s lawyers, Lieutenant Commander Bill Kuebler, will say that Khadr repeatedly lies to his interrogators to avoid being abused. Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson decides that Arar will be deported to Syria on this day (see October 7, 2002), and the deportation is soon carried out (see October 8, 2002). However, it is unclear whether Thompson’s decision is motivated by Fuller’s interrogation of Khadr or other factors. [CBC News, 1/20/2009; Canwest News Service, 1/20/2009] Fuller will testify about the identification at a Guantanamo hearing (see January 19, 2009), but facts calling it into question will emerge under cross-examination (see January 20, 2009).

At 3 o’clock in the morning, Maher Arar is woken up in his cell in New York and taken to another room where he is stripped, searched, shackled, and chained. Two officials read him a decision by the director of the INS, saying that he will be deported to Syria and, as Arar recalls it, “that INS was not the body that deals with Geneva Convention regarding torture.” There is no such convention, but this is probably a reference to the Convention Against Torture (CAT—see October 21, 1994). However, Article 3 of the CAT states: “No State Party shall expel… a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” In addition, the US immigration law cited to justify Arar’s deportation prohibits sending individuals to a country where “it is more likely than not that they will be tortured.” A Justice Department spokesman nevertheless maintains that “the removal of Mr. Arar was accomplished after interagency consultation and in full compliance with the law and with all relevant international treaties and conventions.” [Washington Post, 11/19/2003] On that early morning of October 8, Arar is put on a small jet. After a landing in Washington, a “special removal unit,” a term Arar overheard, boards the plane and is at this point in custody of the CIA. [Washington Post, 11/12/2003; Washington Post, 5/11/2004] “They said Syria was refusing to take me directly,” Arar will later recall, “and I would have to fly to Jordan.” Torture is again his prime thought. “At that time I was thinking of what would happen once I arrived in Syria and how am I to avoid torture.” Via Portland, Maine, and Rome, the jet lands in Amman, Jordan, where six or seven Jordanians are waiting for him. Without a word being spoken Arar is handed over. Blindfolded and chained, he is put in a van, and “right away,… they started beating me,” Arar recalls. Half an hour later inside a building, he is subjected to more questioning. [CBC News, 11/26/2004]

The day following Maher Arar’s handover by the CIA to Jordanian authorities (see October 8, 2002), the overland journey to Syria resumes in various cars and again Arar is beaten. In the evening, Arar arrives at the so-called “Palestinian branch” of Syrian military intelligence. Interrogation begins. “I was very, very scared,” Arar will later recall. There is a metal chair in the corner, and each time Arar does not answer quickly enough, a Syrian colonel points at the chair and asks, “Do you want me to use this?” Arar later learns it is used for torture. Four hours later, he is taken to a cell in the basement. “It was like a grave,” Arar says. “It had no light. It was three feet wide. It was six feet deep. It was seven feet high.… There was a small opening in the ceiling, about one foot by two feet with iron bars. Over that was another ceiling, so only a little light came through this. There were cats and rats up there, and from time to time the cats peed through the opening into the cell. There were two blankets, two dishes, and two bottles. One bottle was for water and the other one was used for urinating during the night. Nothing else. No light. I spent ten months and ten days inside that grave.” [CBC News, 11/26/2004]

Gen. Rick Baccus is relieved of his duties at Guantanamo and also as an officer in the Rhode Island National Guard. With regard to the latter position, his commanding officer in the Rhode Island National Guard, Maj. Gen. Reginald Centracchio, says he has fired him for reasons that “culminated in my losing trust and confidence in him.” One of those reasons, a National Guard spokesman says, is failing to keep headquarters up to date with reports on the well-being of troops. Baccus denies the allegation and expresses surprise. “I’m a little amazed that after being deployed for seven months, separated from my wife, family, and my job and being called to active duty, this is the kind of reception I’m getting.” [Guardian, 10/16/2002] In response to the allegation that his treatment of prisoners made it more difficult for the interrogators, Baccus states that “in no instance did I interfere with interrogations.” [Guardian, 10/16/2002] Paradoxically, this is exactly what the Pentagon is planning to change. Baccus’s sacking coincides with the merger of his Joint Task Force (JTF) 160 with military intelligence unit JTF-170 into a new JTF-GTMO. By doing this Rumsfeld will give military intelligence control of all aspects of the camp, including the MPs. [Newsweek, 5/24/2004] Military police, now called the Joint Detention Operations Group (JDOG), and the Joint Intelligence Group report directly to the commander of JTF-GTMO. The MPs are fully incorporated into a joint effort of extracting information from prisoners. Vice Admiral Albert T. Church III, naval inspector general, will later describe the arrangement during a press briefing in May 2004: “They monitor the detainees, they monitor their behavior, they monitor who the leaders are, who the followers are, they monitor what is said and they ask for an interpreter if there’s a lot of conversation going on. They’ll know eating habits, and they’ll record this in a management information system, which could be useful to the intelligence group, during the interrogations.” [US Department of Defense, 5/12/2004]

A day after his arrival at the “Palestinian Branch” prison in Syria (see October 9, 2002), Maher Arar’s captors begin torturing him. He will later claim, “The beating started… and was very intense for a week, and then less intense for another week. That second and the third days were the worst. I could hear other prisoners being tortured, and screaming and screaming. Interrogations are carried out in different rooms.” Only on this day, two days after his removal, is Canada officially informed of Arar’s deportation from the US. [CBC News, 11/26/2004] A few days later, Arar’s wife, Monia Mazigh, relays her concerns about his fate. “I don’t know even if he’s dead, alive, tortured, punished, anything,” she says. [CBC News, 10/16/2002] The next two days, his torturers use a two-inch thick black electrical cable to beat him all over his body, but mostly on his hands and wrists. They also threaten him with “the chair,” electric shocks and, while constrained inside a tire, with beatings on the sole of his feet. Another tactic is to scare him by putting him in a waiting room where he is forced to listen to the screams of other prisoners being tortured. On the third day, the interrogation round lasts about 18 hours. “They kept beating me so I had to falsely confess and told them I did go to Afghanistan. I was ready to confess to anything if it would stop the torture. They wanted me to say I went to a training camp. I was so scared I urinated on myself twice. The beating was less severe each of the following days. At the end of each day, they would always say, ‘Tomorrow will be harder for you.’ So each night, I could not sleep—I did not sleep for the first four days, and slept no more than two hours a day for about two months.” Interrogations and torture end around October 20, three days before Arar receives a visit from the Canadian consulate. With the colonel and three other Syrian officials present, Arar does not dare talk about his experiences. After the visit, he is required to sign a document, the contents of which are unknown to him, and on another document he is forced to write that he has been to Afghanistan. All in all, Arar receives seven consular visits and one from members of the Canadian parliament. He is never in the position, however, to tell his visitors about the torture and his grave-like cell. For six months he does not see any sunlight, except for during the interrogations and visits. He loses 40 pounds. “I had moments I wanted to kill myself. I was like a dead person.” [Washington Post, 11/12/2003]

Two days after General Rick Baccus has been relieved from duty as the guard commander at Guantanamo (see October 9, 2002), and almost one and a half months since the writing of the Office of Legal Counsel’s (OLC) August memo on torture (see August 1, 2002), military intelligence at Guantanamo begin suggesting new rules of interrogation. Lieutenant Colonel Jerald Phifer, Director J2, sends a memo, to Major General Michael E. Dunlavey, Commander of Joint Task Force (JTF) 170, requesting approval for more severe interrogation techniques. [US Department of Defense, 10/11/2002 ; New Yorker, 2/27/2008] In 2009, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) will write (see April 21, 2009) that Dunlavey’s request is sparked by recent reports on the use of SERE training techniques for interrogation purposes (see January 2002 and After and April 16, 2002). [Huffington Post, 4/21/2009]Three Categories of Techniques - The memo states, “The current guidelines for interrogation procedures at GTMO [Guantanamo] limit the ability of interrogators to counter advanced resistance.” Phifer proposes three categories of techniques. The mildest, which includes yelling and weak forms of deception, are included in category one. Category two techniques are more severe and require approval by an “interrogator group director.” They include the use of stress positions for up to four hours; use of falsified documents; isolation for up to 30 days; sensory deprivation and hooding; 20-hour interrogations; removal of comfort and religious items; replacing hot food with cold military rations; removal of clothing; forced grooming, including the shaving of beards; and playing on detainees’ phobias to induce stress, such as a fear of dogs. The harshest techniques, listed in category three, are to be reserved for a “very small percentage of the most uncooperative detainees” and only used with permission from the commander of the prison. These methods include using non-injurious physical contact like poking or grabbing; threatening a detainee with death or severe pain or threatening that a family member would be subjected to such harm; exposing him to cold weather or water; using a wet towel to “induce the misperception of suffocation.” [US Department of Defense, 10/11/2002 ; New Yorker, 2/27/2008]Desire to Extract More Information from Detainee - The request is prompted in part by military intelligence’s belief that Guantanamo detainee Mohamed al-Khatani has more information than the FBI has managed to extract from him. “Al-Khatani is a person in… whom we have considerable interest,” Dell’Orto will explain during a 2004 press briefing at the White House. “He has resisted our techniques. And so it is concluded at Guantanamo that it may be time to inquire as to whether there may be more flexibility in the type of techniques we use on him.” [Washington File, 6/23/2004]JAG Officer Concludes Tactics are Legal - The same day, a staff judge advocate, Lieutenant Colonel Diane E. Beaver, reviews Phifer’s proposed techniques for legality and, while making qualifications and recommending further review, concludes in a memo to Dunlavey that they are legal. Also the same day, Dunlavey sends the list of techniques to his superior, General James T. Hill, commander of the Southern Command, requesting approval for their use. Dunlavey writes: “Although [the techniques currently employed] have resulted in significant exploitable intelligence the same methods have become less effective over time. I believe the methods and techniques delineated in the accompanying J-2 memorandum will enhance our efforts to extract additional information.” [US Department of Defense, 10/11/2002 ] Beaver concludes that since President Bush had decided that all the detainees “are not protected by the Geneva Conventions” (see January 18-25, 2002, February 7, 2002), all of the desired techniques are allowable because “no international body of law directly applies.” [Savage, 2007, pp. 178]

Lieutenant Colonel Diane Beaver, the top legal adviser to the Army’s interrogation unit at Guantanamo, JTF-170, writes a legal analysis of the extreme interrogation techniques being used on detainees. Beaver notes that some of the more savage “counter-resistance” techniques being considered for use, such as waterboarding (the use of which has resulted in courts-martials for users in the past) might present legal problems. She acknowledges that US military personnel at Guantanamo are bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which characterizes “cruelty,” “maltreatment,” “threats,” and “assaults” as felonies. However, she reasons, if interrogators can obtain “permission,” or perhaps “immunity,” from higher authorities “in advance,” they might not be legally culpable. In 2006, a senior Defense Department official calls Beaver’s legal arguments “inventive,” saying: “Normally, you grant immunity after the fact, to someone who has already committed a crime, in exchange for an order to get that person to testify. I don’t know whether we’ve ever faced the question of immunity in advance before.” The official praises Beaver “for trying to think outside the box. I would credit Diane as raising that as a way to think about it.” Beaver will later be promoted to the staff of the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel, where she will specialize in detainee issues. But Naval General Counsel Alberto Mora is less impressed. When he reads Beaver’s legal analysis two months later (see December 17-18, 2002), he calls it “a wholly inadequate analysis of the law.” According to Mora, the Beaver memo held that “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment could be inflicted on the Guantanamo detainees with near impunity.” Such acts are blatantly illegal, Mora believes. Mora will note that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld bases his decision to approve such harsh “counter-resistance” techniques (see December 2, 2002) in part on Beaver’s memo. He will write that Rumsfeld’s decision “was fatally grounded on these serious failures of legal analysis.” Neither Beaver nor Rumsfeld will draw any “bright line” prohibiting the combination of these techniques, or defining any limits for their use. As such, this vagueness of language “could produce effects reaching the level of torture,” which is prohibited without exception both in the US and under international law. [New Yorker, 2/27/2006]Written under Difficult Circumstances - Beaver later tells a more complete story of her creation of the memo. She insists on a paper trail showing that the authorization of extreme interrogation techniques came from above, not from “the dirt on the ground,” as she describes herself. The Guantanamo commander, Major General Michael Dunlavey, only gives her four days to whip up a legal analysis, which she sees as a starting point for a legal review of the interrogation policies. She has few books and materials, and more experienced lawyers at the US Southern Command, the Judge Advocate General School, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the DIA refuse to help her write the analysis. She is forced to write her analysis based on her own knowledge of the law and what she could find on the Internet. She bases her analysis on the previous presidential decision to ignore the Geneva Conventions, later recalling, “It was not my job to second-guess the president.” Knowing little of international law, she ignores that body of law altogether. She fully expects her analysis to be dissected and portions of it overridden, but she is later astonished that her analysis will be used as a legal underpinning for the administration’s policies. She has no idea that her analysis is to be used to provide legal cover for much more senior White House officials (see June 22, 2004). She goes through each of the 18 approved interrogation techniques (see December 2, 2002), assessing them against the standards set by US law, including the Eighth Amendment, which proscribes “cruel and unusual punishment,” the federal torture statutes, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Beaver finds that each of the 18 techniques are acceptable “so long as the force used could plausibly have been thought necessary in a particular situation to achieve a legitimate government objective, and it was applied in a good faith effort and not maliciously or sadistically for the very purpose of causing harm.” Law professor Phillippe Sands later observes: “That is to say, the techniques are legal if the motivation is pure. National security justifies anything.” The interrogators must be properly trained, Beaver notes, and any interrogations involving the more severe techniques must “undergo a legal, medical, behavioral science, and intelligence review prior to their commencement.” However, if all of the criteria are met, she “agree[s] that the proposed strategies do not violate applicable federal law.” Sands points out that her use of the word “agree” indicates that she “seems to be confirming a policy decision that she knows has already been made.” 'Awful' but Understandable - Sands later calls her reasoning “awful,” but understands that she was forced to write the memo, and reasonably expected to have more senior legal officials review and rewrite her work. “She could not have anticipated that there would be no other piece of written legal advice bearing on the Guantanamo interrogations. She could not have anticipated that she would be made the scapegoat.” Beaver will recall passing Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington in a Pentagon hallway shortly after she submitted the memo. Addington smiled at her and said, “Great minds think alike.” [Vanity Fair, 5/2008]

The Human Rights Chamber of Bosnia-Herzegovina rules that Bosnian government has violated human rights conventions in transferring six terrorist suspects into US custody in January (see January 18, 2002). Furthermore, Bosnia should have sought assurances from the US that it would not seek the death penalty against the detainees, the court says. [Amnesty International, 8/19/2003]

At a Republican fundraiser, President Bush erroneously labels captured Islamic militant Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002) as “one of the top three leaders” of al-Qaeda. Senior government officials have long been aware that many intelligence officials believe Zubaida to be little more than a low-level “gofer” for al-Qaeda (see Shortly After March 28, 2002 and April 9, 2002 and After). Bush says, apparently boasting of the deaths of some captured suspects: “I would say we’ve hauled in—arrested, or however you want to put it—a couple of thousand of al-Qaeda. Some of them are former leaders. Abu Zubaida was one of the top three leaders in the organization. Like number weren’t as lucky, they met a different kind of fate. But they’re no longer a problem. We’re slowly but surely rounding them up. The other day we got this guy, [Ramzi b]in al-Shibh. He popped his head up. He’s not a problem (see September 11, 2002). Slowly but surely. And I’m not giving up. There’s not a calendar on my desk that says, okay, on this day, you quit. That’s just not the way I think.” [White House, 10/14/2002]

The prison population of Guantanamo is reported to stand at 598, very close to its ideal maximum capacity of about 600. [Guardian, 10/16/2002] Its population will reach a maximum of about 660 in July 2003 (see July 18, 2003).

Gen. Michael Dunlavey, head of the intelligence operations at Guantanamo, faces an outbreak of unrest among the prisoners after he announces that four detainees will be repatriated: three Afghans and a Tajik. According to an October 20 email sent by an FBI official from Guantanamo, these detainees “will be taken back to their respective countries in late October and the same plane will return with between ten and thirty-four new detainees.” After the announcement, the camp erupts in unrest and there is a “threat of mass suicide by the detainees.” [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/26/2002 ] It is not clear what has caused the unrest. According to Shafiq Rasul, one of the detainees, “They would announce upon loud speakers (particularly when people were released) that if we co-operated with them they would release us. We knew this included acting as an informant.” [Rasul, Iqbal, and Ahmed, 7/26/2004 ] According to the FBI official, “no suicides [happen] and the Camp quickly [settles] down.” [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/26/2002 ]

Gen. James T. Hill, commander of the Southern Command, sends a memo to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers providing him information on the new interrogation techniques that have been requested for use at Guantanamo (see October 11, 2002). He says that new methods are needed because, “despite our best efforts, some detainees have tenaciously resisted our current interrogation methods.” He says he thinks Categories I and II techniques are “legal and humane.” He only questions the legality of category three techniques, recommending additional legal advice from lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department. Hill writes: “I am particularly troubled by the use of implied or expressed threats of death of the detainee or his family. However, I desire to have as many options as possible at my disposal….” [US Department of Defense, 10/25/2002 ] Hill later says, “We weren’t sure in the beginning what we had; we’re not sure today what we have. There are still people who do not talk to us. We could have the keys to the kingdom and not know it.” [New York Times, 6/21/2004]

Shortly after the October 11, 2002, request by Guantanamo commander Major General Michael Dunlavey for approval of new, harsh interrogation techniques, and after Guantanamo legal counsel Diane Beaver submitted her analysis justifying the use of those techniques (see October 11, 2002), General James T. “Tom” Hill forwards everything to General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hill includes a letter that contains the sentence, “Our respective staffs, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and Joint Task Force 170 [the Army unit in charge of interrogating Guantanamo detainees] have been trying to identify counter-resistant techniques that we can lawfully employ.” In the letter, Hill is clearly ambivalent about the use of severe interrogation methods. He wants the opinion of senior Pentagon lawyers, and requests that “Department of Justice lawyers review the third category [the most severe] of techniques.” But none of this happens. The Joint Chiefs should have subjected the request to a detailed legal review, including scrutiny by Myers’s own counsel, Jane Dalton, but instead, Pentagon general counsel William J. Haynes short-circuits the approval process. Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora recalls Dalton telling him: “Jim pulled this away. We never had a chance to complete the assessment.” Myers later recalls being troubled that the normal procedures had been circumvented. Looking at the “Haynes Memo,” Myers will point out, “You don’t see my initials on this.” He notes that he “discussed it,” but never signed off on it. “This was not the way this should have come about.” Myers will come to believe that there was “intrigue” going on “that I wasn’t aware of, and Jane wasn’t aware of, that was probably occurring between [William J.] Haynes, White House general counsel [Alberto Gonzales], and Justice.” Instead of going through the proper channels, the memo goes straight to Haynes, who merely signs off with a note that says, “Good to go.” [Vanity Fair, 5/2008]

Camp X-Ray prisoners. They wear sensory deprivation masks.
[Source: US Navy]Four detainees are freed from Guantanamo Bay, the first of the 600 or so detainees there to be released. The four, mostly elderly Afghan men, are released because they were determined not to be involved in al-Qaeda and posed no security threat. [BBC, 10/29/2002] 19 more will be released in March 2003. [BBC, 3/24/2003] The detainees are supposedly being kept there to be interrogated about what they know of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. But it is reported that virtually none of the prisoners in Guantanamo have any useful information. One US official says, “[Guantanamo] is a dead end” for fresh intelligence information. According to the Washington Post, “Officials realize many of them had little intelligence value to begin with.” [Washington Post, 10/29/2002] US officials privately concede that “perhaps as many as 100 other captives” are innocent of any connections to al-Qaeda or the Taliban, but most of these still have not been released. Furthermore, not a single detainee has been brought before a US military tribunal. Apparently this is to hide “a sorry fact: the US mostly netted Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters of only low to middling importance, bagging few of the real bad guys.” [Time, 10/27/2002] At least 59 were deemed to have no intelligence even before being sent to Cuba, but were nonetheless sent there, apparently because of bureaucratic inertia. [Los Angeles Times, 12/22/2002]

A group of militants thought to be linked to Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hezb-e-Islami organisation are captured in Pakistan. One man arrested is Gul Rahman, who will later freeze to death at a CIA-controlled prison in Afghanistan (see November 20, 2002). Another is Ghairat Baheer, a doctor and Hekmatyar’s son-in-law. Hekmatyar was a CIA ally during the Soviet-Afghan war (see (1986)), but is now linked to al-Qaeda. According to Baheer, Rahman had driven from Peshawar, Pakistan, in the northwest frontier to Islamabad for a medical checkup. He is staying with Baheer, an old friend, when US agents and Pakistani security forces storm the house and take both men, two guards, and a cook into custody. [Associated Press, 3/28/2010]

Two detainees, Gul Rahman and Ghairat Baheer, are transferred from Pakistan to the CIA-controlled Salt Pit black site in Afghanistan. Baheer will say that he was separated from Rahman about a week after they were captured (see October 29, 2002) and they were both moved to the prison, so presumably they are transferred there together. [Associated Press, 3/28/2010] Rahman will later die at the prison (see November 20, 2002).

Jamil al-Banna and Bisher al-Rawi have been helping the British intelligence agency MI5 communicate with al-Qaeda linked imam Abu Qatada. Al-Rawi had a formal informant relationship but was fired (see Late September 2001-Summer 2002), while al-Banna has been only helping a little on a casual basis (see Summer-Early November 2002). They are planning to travel together to Gambia for business purposes. On October 31, the day before they are to leave, al-Banna is visited by MI5 agents and British police. According to an MI5 memo later given to his lawyers, they attempt to formally recruit him as an informant. They tell him that he could “start a new life with a new identity” and acquire British citizenship (he is a long-time British resident). He turns down the offer. The agents tell him that he can travel to Gambia without a problem and return to Britain when they are done. MI5 records confirm that they are given permission to travel. [Washington Post, 4/2/2006; Observer, 7/29/2007] Al-Banna and al-Rawi leave for their trip the next day (see November 1-7, 2002).

The deputy commander of the Pentagon’s Criminal Investigation Task Force at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility raises concerns that the SERE techniques being used against suspected terrorists (see December 2001) were “developed to better prepare US military personnel to resist interrogations and not as a means of obtaining reliable information.” Concurrently with this officer’s questions, Air Force officials cite “serious concerns regarding the legality of many of the proposed techniques.” Legal officials from other military branches agree, citing “maltreatment” that would “arguably violate federal law.” [Senate Armed Services Committee, 11/20/2008 ]

Email Updates

Receive weekly email updates summarizing what contributors have added to the History Commons database

Donate

Developing and maintaining this site is very labor intensive. If you find it useful, please give us a hand and donate what you can.Donate Now

Volunteer

If you would like to help us with this effort, please contact us. We need help with programming (Java, JDO, mysql, and xml), design, networking, and publicity. If you want to contribute information to this site, click the register link at the top of the page, and start contributing.Contact Us